See a street become sane and safe right before your eyes

This is just a great look at how streets CAN be once we start changing bad habits. Be sure to click the interactive graphic here (photo above is a screenshot).

It’s easy to forget that our streets are alterable. They weren’t set down by God on the eighth day; they were designed by human beings. Unfortunately, throughout the 20th century, most of the human beings designing our streets were traffic engineers. For the most part, they viewed the city from behind a windshield and saw the street as a problem to be solved for automobiles. The result is the American city that most of us know today: sprawling, traffic-choked, hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, dependent on a vast, never-ending flow of cheap oil, and deeply unsustainable.

(Via GOOD Magazine)

Comments

[Raymond]

Visually, the after picutre looks great, no doubt. But what happens to a major thoroughfare when you go from 6 lanes (as shown in the original picture), to 3 lanes (one of which is reserved strictly for bus traffic)? The after picture has eliminated all of the street parking. I would think that this proposal, while visually appealing, would be very impractical in the real world.

[John Michlig]

Raymond, you understandably proceed from a premise informed by the longtime status quo - - since debunked.

Six lanes? It's been shown that roads are notoriously over-built by zealous engineers who respond to woefully inaccurate traffic studies. In the end, constantly building capacity and "throughput" simply INDUCES traffic.

STREET PARKING: Glad you pointed that out - this is important. If you actually count the available spaces, you lose the ability to park about 20 cars when on-street parking is eliminated or thinned, which, on the one hand, could be easily made up for in rear-building lots and even a purpose-built ramp. Remember, this is a WALKABLE DISTRICT, so hiking four blocks from the ramp is no huge problem.

The better alternative, though, is that you begin to cultivate a different set of behaviors. "Why should I drive downtown and struggle/pay to park when I can just get on a comfortable Metrolink bus/train from the park-and-ride and work on my laptop on the way in?"

Guess what? Fewer cars make those 3 lanes pretty roomy as well.

THAT'S the real world. "Impractical," frankly, is where we are at right now.

[Franklin Resident]

So who is sending in a picture of our UNLivable city to be transformed into a Livable one? Would love to see it