System Rants and Raves

We've got one major problem to think about, and that is a meta-problem -- thinking about how we think about transportation networks. Shift our thinking from the 1950's car-first, zoning-heavy mobility strategy to a car-last accessibility strategy. As we started up high and dug down, we said we should shift our focus from Mobility (car based for healthy, capable, well-off people ) to Quadruple-A Accessibility (all ages and ability accessibility, including all wealth classes), and so now we need to figure out how to go back and re-do some previous decisions that got us where we are. We already hit one bit topic - safety - and we'll keep that in mind as we think about zoning and our neighborhood structures. Here is a critical point: every journey is a personal decision, and as we discussed in earlier discussions about network theory, most are repeat decisions, so the "iteration with preference" provides a powerful engine for change over time. Ideally, most des...

  A couple of blogs ago we ended up with 4 key things to fix, and the first two we covered last time, as the "hard" people/culture sorts of problems. That leaves two "easy" technically-focused problems. Change street design to improve inherent safety and to promote better driver behavior. Shift our thinking from the 1950's car-first, zoning-heavy mobility strategy to a car-last accessibility strategy. The "street design problem" is by now fairly well understood, as Jeff Speck, Charles Marohn (and the StrongTown crew), and the Bruntletts have written about this in depth from social, economic, and engineering perspectives. I'll only briefly recap, as I cannot do better than these experts: Cars drive sprawl, which ends up being unsafe, uneconomic, and dehumanizing Applying roadway (actually, highway) design optimizations to streets turns them into "stroads", which are not safe or accessible streets for living/shopping/working, nor are the...

  We previously outlined four major problems to solve to improve street safety, and two of these are related, as they both deal with responsibility. Figure out how to make somebody in relevant authority responsible AND accountable for street safety Alter our social and legal responsibility for crashes from individual obligation to collective responsibility. Let's dig in a bit. We know that changing broad social attitudes -- the culture -- is not easy. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" said Peter Drucker. We also know how to actually change culture, and we also know that intent, discussion, convincing arguments, and cajoling will not do it. Changing culture requires forced action first, and then over time, with empirical experience, attitudes change. It takes pressure on a lot of implicit points, and it is generally a slow process. Yes, individuals can change their views on their own, but it's an even slower process with uncertain results. It's bette...

  Last blog we established a couple of pretty obvious changes to improve safety, but ended up asking WHY are our cities and streets (stroads) built this way? Here I have a bit of a confession: I've finished reading Marohn's "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer" and while I thought it would be mostly civil engineering, Marohn actually covers some of the system-level issues I'd been working on. He's done so more thoroughly than I probably could, so I'm not going to pick at those details. Cliffs notes: We purposefully decided to go all-in on car-centric mobility, and with an over-zealous and racially-tinged view of building suburban enclaves, we separated residential from commercial from industrial land uses, and we knit them together with roads. At the outset, many engineers didn't realize where this would lead, as the early model suburbs were "not that bad" in that they had slow, narrow residential streets to fairly slow collectors to fa...

  Last blog, we saw clear patterns of pedestrian and cycling crashes that indicated a pretty obvious point: the downtown area has significantly fewer deaths despite a lot of crashes. The data shows similar patterns for car vs car crashes, too. This tell us a few things: Speed kills. This is pretty well known, and it's obvious. Arterial streets and highways are deadly, due both to speed and conflict points. Drivers are by nature dangerous, to themselves, other cars, and other street users. What's unique about the downtown area? Several things, and these are DESIGN factors, primarily: Dense city blocks on a tight grid, as a traditional city street layout that pre-dates the shift to car-centric suburban-sprawl design since the 50's. Sidewalks on both sides, with crossings at every corner. Many intersections have stop signs, and most of the rest are signalized. Relatively low speeds. Synchronized lights are at 20mph, so hurrying faster pays zero dividends. Some cyclin...

  A few days back we talked about the important of aligning responsibility with authority, and providing incentives for resolving issues. Let's think back to the Safety Pyramid and pretend that we want to shrink the pyramid, reducing traffic fatalities, injuries, crashes, and the rest. Hey - we just reinvented VisionZero, right? How do we go from a simple vision to actionable reality? We need a strategy that all can get behind, and then a strategy deployment effort that lines up goals, initiatives, incentives, and tracking for the various departments on down to individuals. But wait, it's already pretty obvious that killing and maiming people is bad, right? Why are deaths already occurring? Surely SOMEBODY is responsible to ensure people don't die, aren't they? If I look at my city's website, there isn't any mention of health or safety on the main page, except for a COVID link and an animal welfare link, but there is a Traffic Map link. If I pick through ...