That’s the underlying suggestion of a recent post at the Project for Public Spaces blog, anyway, which compares Dutch and American road design strategies.
By and large, the US has taken the freeway as a model for all it’s roads, favoring big, straight thoroughfares with wide lanes and shoulders. In short, the kind of road that allows you to go fast and drift around a bit without slamming into an embankment or a parked car or something. The philosophy came out of freeway design and strategies for making high-speed driving safer. By the late 60s, there was plenty of evidence this “forgiving” approach was working on the Interstates, so traffic engineers sensibly decided that the principles should be applied to all our roads. With everything from suburban boulevards to city streets, we’ve essentially been creating mini-freeways. And our road fatality numbers have fallen 15 percent in the last 35 years — so what’s anybody complaining about, you might ask. After all, whatever we’ve done is making drivers safer.
Well, around the time we were embracing the “forgiving highway” model for all our roads, the Dutch–who also agree that freeways should be structurally forgiving of drivers–had a 20 percent higher overall fatality rate on their roads than than US did. But they opted for a different design principle for city streets. Urban roadways were made narrower and less hand-holdy for drivers and more accommodative of cyclists and those weirdos who for some reason like to walk. They set up a system where highways were for going fast, but city streets were different–they would get you to and from the highways and they would get you around town, but they were not mini Interstates. They frequently became stripped down affairs, without all the bright yellow markings and massive concrete dividers and towering stoplights that we USAers are used to. The philosophy is sometimes known as “naked” or “self-explaining” roads. In essence, a range of users are pretty much left to figure out the specifics of getting around according to their own good sense. As one author describes it, the purpose “is to make the street legible so users understand that it is a shared environment and behave accordingly.”
A fascinating example is a major–20,000 cars a day!–intersection in the Dutch city of Drachten that used to look a lot a typical American intersection, with lots of bright paint and traffic signals and enormous signs telling you what and what not to do. Traffic planners tore that stuff out and went naked, just putting down a roundabout in the center. The sidewalks even disappeared as distinct structures. Everyone figured it out though. Fatalities at the intersection dropped markedly, as did travel times.
That was just one data point in the larger national trend. While the US traffic fatalities have fallen by 15 percent, Holland’s have fallen by 75 percent. And, thus, the headline assertion: If America had matched Dutch fatality rates, we would have had only 15,000 deaths on our roads last year instead of 37,000.
Eric Dunbaugh of the Texas Transportation Institute has looked at the fatality rates on “livable streets”–broadly speaking, those that aren’t mini freeways–in the US and found that they are considerably lower (pdf). Apparently, using street design to wean drivers from highway-style driving habits really does save lives.
The rub, however, is that involves slower diving speeds. As Dunbaugh puts it: “The more basic problem appears to be that safety and livability objectives are often in direct conflict with the overarching objective of mobility, and its proxy—speed.”
We Americans do love our speed. Saying, “We’re going to take this wide smooth inky-black four-lane street with bright painted lines you’re used to–where you’re functionally encouraged to go 15 mph over the speed limit and all you have to worry about is staying in your wide well-marked lane and do what the traffic lights tell you–and replace it with a ‘naked’ street, where you’ll be jumbling around with everybody and just have to be a grownup and go slower and be considerate and observant,” will not necessarily be the beginning of an easy conversation. But it’s certainly an important one.
August 12th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I’m sure you’d see plenty of bitching and moaning if a plan like this were to ever be implemented. The car-culture of America is based on that mobility, that speed that needs to be curbed for a system like this to work; toss in cell phones, texting, distracted drivers and the like and its a recipe for (at least at first) disaster.
Adequate enforcement of rules that force drivers to be able to pay attention (eliminating cell phone use, food consumption, etc) would be the first step in allowing for ’shared space.’
August 12th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
It’s attempting to be done in places in the US. The real issue is with the ADA laws. In a shared space like you have pictured, there’s no delineation for the visually impaired (the tactile warning devices or truncated domes). But, if there was some flexibility built into that law, it could probably work very well.
Great article. I really enjoy your writing style.
One thing I thought was missing though from both articles though–no mention of Hans Monderman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
August 12th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
@jhunt: I think part of the design philosophy revolves around having roads (not rules) forcing driver attention. Roads designed to slow traffic also tend to reduce the incidence of texting (and other stupid behavior) while driving. Drivers must focus on driving to their peril.
August 12th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
[...] Could Dutch-Style Roads Save 22,000 Lives Each Year In the US? [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Another thing I see a similar misconception, is the idea that more lanes equals faster driving. Clearly on freeways more lanes are needed to increase capacity, but when a fast road travels through a built up area, these extra lanes become useless. If a car needs to take a left turn off one of these streets, they will end up waiting for a very long time and backing up traffic. An example of a road like this is Route 6 in Eastham, Cape Cod.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Rte-6,+Barnstable,+Massachusetts+02667&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=30.737461,79.013672&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FdRLfwIdExrU-w&split=0&ll=41.858854,-69.986252&spn=0.001762,0.004823&t=k&z=18
This road has two lanes in each direction, no sidewalk and only a handful of lanes for turning. If a road like this was redesigned with just a single lane of thru traffic, with the rest of the road made into a collection of more turn lanes, a median strip, and room for bikers and pedestrians, drivers speeds would be slower, but also more consistent. Instead of going 50 mph for a couple minutes and then getting stuck behind a turning driver, drivers would instead go a consistent 30 mph, equaling a similar driving time and a safer environment for all people passing through.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Two things: One, I’d hate to be a truck driver having to go through that area.
Two, U.S. enforcement is heavily focused on speed, and to a lesser extent on seat belt use. I think we’d have a more effective enforcement regime if cops were out to cite people for not signalling when changing lanes or turning, not keeping a safe following distance and passing on the right. If you could get better complienace in these matters, driving would be much safer for everyone. Speed is a proxy for sage driving but you can drive unsafely at low speeds and I’m sure evryone reading this has driven quite safely at speeds above the posted limit. I also hate the civil liberties implications of cops looking into your car without a warrant or probable cause in order to see if you are wearing a seat belt. That really bothers me.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
America has a very disfunctional idea about roads.
Make the roads safe and coddling, so you need not pay attention while driving with your cigarette, cell phone and big gulp in your hands. Then wail and moan about how people drive with all these distractions.
Make the roads straight, flat and fast, better for the efficiency and throughput that are so important. Then slap an arbitrarily lower “speed limit” on the road and use it as a source of revenue generation.
Police will only enforce driving violations they can see from the median though the hole of their donut. It’s for too onerous to expect them to enforce ALL the driving laws when they can just park on the grass with their Krispy Kreme and wait for the radar gun to beep.
I give tremendous credit to anyplace in this country that can do better than the status quo, given the uphill battle that entails.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Rockfish, agreed that limits are low and cops are too focused on them. I have seen many variations on the safe is less safe meme in discussing road safety, including many stories on sign and pavement marking removal to make roads safer. I don’t put much stock in these claims, because the fatality rate on U.S. roads is in long-term decline. It’s not as if we have a sustained increase in auto deaths and need to come up with some radical plan to reduce the same. To the contrary, roads have seen design improvements where state DOTs have implemented modern design overlays or reconstructed old roads, and a corresponding decrease in crashes. Put another way, there are many tight curves on the Brooklyn-Queen Expressway, and these curves are pretty much the exact spot of serial collisions. I hardly think the way to cut down on collision incidence would be to tighten the curves further, and straightening them out would likely help.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I think a great first step would be a push to convince drivers that sticking to their average speed is best for safety and fuel economy. At my job I drive many vehicles, many of which calculate the average speed right on the dash. I get the same average speed as other employees that are known to be aggressive drivers.
You can only really go 20-25 MPH in city driving. Why not just stick to that? Why are we travelling at 40 MPH just to get to the next light and sit there?
August 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Two things I wonder about this article… what is Holland’s density compared to the U.S. (especially in the cities) and what is their average fuel economy like. City driving, of course, is about the least efficient in terms of fuel efficiency you can get… the constant stopping (and staying stopped) and accelerating. At lower speeds, the amount of time the car is running is increased and the fuel efficiency is decreased. Now, the amount of time the car is stopped at stop lights may decrease… but I don’t see this as being a more energy efficient means of constructing roads.
It isn’t immediately clear how this would really work for many roads. In residential areas, it seems logical… and I can think of plenty of residential streets that are very narrow in Chicago where this would already be the case. But what about the major arterials? And because of the sprawl that is found throughout the country, would this plan implement more highways to link the livable areas?
August 14th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
[...] Save 22,000 Lives Each Year In the US? This is an excellent article written by Jebediah Reed of The Infrastructurist about how Dutch-style roads could save 22,000 lives each year in the [...]
August 15th, 2009 at 9:43 am
In Kansas City, Missouri we have a shopping district known as the Country Club Plaza. The district has the densest urban development in our metropolitan area. It is arguably our real down town. Although it claims to be the first shopping district in the country to account for the automobile in its design, it possesses so many characteristics of new urbanism, one would think it had been built in the last twenty years rather than the 1920s. It is probably the most pedestrian-friendly part of the metro.
One thing it does not have is excessive traffic regulation devices. The intersections, if they have anything at all mostly have stop signs (though there are a few traffic lights). It tends not to have turning lanes, either left or right. Most intersections don’t have pedestrian crossing signals.
I used to say that if I was ever in an accident on the Plaza (as it is colloquially known here) I’d sue the city for its negligence in not properly regulating traffic. One thing I failed to notice until I started reading articles like this is that the Plaza isn’t known for its traffic or pedestrian accidents. (I wasn’t able to quickly find statistics.)
As I reflect on twenty-five years of driving through the Plaza, I don’t think I’ve encountered much of the insane driving that is so common in other parts of the metropolitan area. When I drive through unmarked intersections I the other drivers are moving slowly, like me, because they share my concern for getting hit. As a pedestrian in the area, I don’t remember ever feeling threatened by a car that was moving too fast.
August 16th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
@Point Special - Did some digging around for the numbers you were looking to have for comparison. A comparison of the population density of the countries as a whole is telling, because the Netherlands are among the most densely settled countries in the world, at 1,025/sq mi (#19 country) while the US is one of the least densely settled at 79/sq mi (#172). This means that as a country, the Netherlands are a little less densely settled than the state of New Jersey. Our comparatively low density illustrates our “need for speed” mentality. For sake of comparison though, Amsterdam (11,545/sq mi) and Rotterdam (4,740/sq mi) are at about the same densities as Boston and Honolulu respectively.
I wasn’t able to come up with any fuel economy stats, but what is really telling is the infrastructure available in the cities in the Netherlands, its affects on mode share and less obviously, its affect on driving. Amsterdam has nearly equal distribution between car, bike and streetcar. This has an obvious effect on fuel economy–reducing the number of people in cars and the number of overall car trips. Being Europe, the cars tend to be a lot smaller and more fuel efficient anyway (high gas prices and differences in cultural attitudes), which further affects the fuel efficiency. But the overlooked component to this (and what this post specifically talks about) is the change in approach required on the part of drivers. In the Netherlands, drivers expect to encounter pedestrians, bicycles, streetcars and more in the roadways–and not just in the historic center of cities. The use of roads is more equitable, demanding a more tolerant attitude and awareness on the part of drivers. At any given intersection, you may encounter multiple streetcar lines, separated bike lanes and pedestrian crosswalks in addition to car traffic. The minimal signage generates an initial impression of near chaos. Instead, the emphasis has less to do with the regulatory devices (signage, stripes, lights, etc)( which are there, just in far less abundance and serving to provide order at the macro level) and more to do with requiring cooperative action and focusing attention on the other people sharing the road.
In a similar vein, John Staddon wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly a year ago comparing his impressions of US and British attitudes toward traffic regulation with comparable conclusions.
Would this work in the US? Is it a matter of changing the design of roadways or the culture that sought out the roadways? I’m skeptical, but hopeful.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Eric F- I’m not proposing adding a few hairpins to I-95.
Re safety, it’s not about making roads less safe. It’s about encouraging a different attitude to encourage slower, more attentive driving in certain places.
(Side note: fatality rate is not the same as incident rates. Cars have become a hell of a lot safer)
I understood the focus of the post to more about the increasing proportion of local roads being designed (or modified) into “arterials” solely for the purpose of speeding traffic. I got a bit side-tracked by the enforcement thing.
In many cases where these roads used to be “Main Streets” they have become six lane monsters where the speeds between traffic lights is near 60 mph. (Route 1 anywhere between Maine and DC is a good example). The desire
August 20th, 2009 at 4:34 am
Hi! We’re urban designers and sustainability consultants in the Netherlands, and I walked into this article. We’ve been working with the ‘Shared Space’ methodology for road traffic maangement for years, which is what you describe. Someone mentioned earlier this is the brainchild of Hans Monderman. I have some things to add which might illuminate the whole idea:
- First, this concept has very little relation and is hardly influenced by factors such as density, fuel economy or common road behaviour, as most of the comments suggest. This method has been executed both in high-density crwoded, typically ‘agressive’ urban areas as well as very low density rural areas, and it works equally fine,
- This concept is based on basic human psychology, and this is a very important factor in the scheme. Not mentioning this takes away the largest part of its operating strategy and reduces it to mere mechanics, which are not telling enough to explain and convince the system.
- This concept does reduce speed, but the writer of the article must know that speed is not the important factor, it’s throughput that matters. In the shared space system, throughput is actually considerably higher, because cars hardly have to stop. So, you go slowerr, but never stop, which results in safer roads, higher throughput, lower agressiveness… also the costs of roadbuilding go down as you need considderably less traffic lights, signage and other expensive infrastructure.
- It’s been implemented and proved successful in various situations in a large variety of countries including England, Sweden, the Netherlands and China.
Shared space does not work everywhere and requires experience and knowledge to implement. But where it works, which is in the majority of situations in urban settings, it increases traffic throughput, reduces road noise and road associated noise (honking, etc), greatly reduces accidents and reduces road construction and maintenance costs. It’s hard to find anything wrong with that
September 8th, 2009 at 12:07 am
[...] see people steer cars on the right side) is rather fascinating. The segment also reminded me of a post by the Infrastructurist on the same issue (based off a great explanatory post on the Project for Public Spaces). The [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:09 am
it’s Shared Space hype again… I take it you realise that only a small fraction of roads in the Netherlands are designed like this ? And that they are not popular ?
The real success is with the other 99% of roads in the Netherlands. These are the safest roads in the world, where people are safe on foot or by bicycle as well as in cars.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Very interesting article! I have to say, the thought of an implementation like this in the US scares me just a bit. However, it might further encourage those with an unavoidably long commute to find alternatives like the bus, train, light rail, or carpooling.
I have to completely agree with “walkable’s” above comment regarding the lack of ADA accommodations in this system. No matter how far they have to go, the blind and visually impaired should always be given reasonable access to places of business, employment establishments, areas of public access, crosswalks, etc. Truncated domes and tactile cues are a federal requirement in all new construction projects and commercial establishments.
I agree, you have to look at the big picture, how many fatalities…etc. but the big picture should not eliminate the rights and abilities of individuals who are attempting to also lead a “normal” life.