Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers
(collegetowns.substack.com)310 points by raybb 5 days ago
310 points by raybb 5 days ago
Are you talking about roundabouts? Those are a nightmare for pedestrians
Roundabouts aren't perfect but they greatly reduce the speed of traffic at the crossing point (while increasing the overall throughput of the intersection).
Without looking up statistics (and I'd love to be proven wrong here), I'd be willing to guess that roundabouts may result in some marginal increase in minor accidents but massively reduces fatalities or accidents that leave the pedestrian in the ICU.
Additionally with a roundabout the crossing can be moved a few cars down the street away from the roundabout itself so that cars can have line of sight to safely approach the crossing and pedestrians have time to react to incoming vehicles. On top of that proper placement of crossings allows a normal zebra crossing to be upgraded to a pelican, puffin, or toucan crossing without impeding flow of traffic within the roundabout.
For pedestrians, roundabouts also eliminate left turn lanes, saving ~9' of stroad width to cross and mean only looking one, predictable, direction at a time.
How so?
Both as a pedestrian and driver I prefer roundabouts as they force drivers to slow down to non-lethal speeds and there's typically a one car length of road between the turn and pedestrian crossing, so the cars are already going straight when they cross it.
The only road users who don't mix well with roundabouts are cyclists on cycling lanes, as they get in and out of view too fast.
With heavy mixed traffic it's a nightmare for everyone. If pedestrians have the right of way (as they should) and there are a lot of them the whole thing would likely become a permanent traffic jam with almost always one car waiting to turn blocking most of the circle.
here in italy at certain roundabouts we have traffic lights that only work when a pedestrian called them. otherwise, the traffic lights flash a flashing yellow light and as a car you can use the roundabout as if the traffic lights didn't exist.
it's quite useful, if you ask me, it combines the best of both solutions. of course the traffic light has a countdown so if someone presses it immediately after having worked, it will wait for 30sec/1 min before being red again
Better: define one street as the thru street and put a stop or yield on the cross-street.
Yes any two streets crossing should ideally either be tiny (like small residential streets where no lights or signs are needed) or only one should be an obvious through street and the other(s) connecting streets. The key is to never have ”grids” of through streets.
zoom out on the map. There is a big roundabout a couple blocks away. It is called "The Circle In Orange."
We should aim at better drivers rather than better intersections, but bad drivers are everywhere.
Years ago I worked in a building on the side of a long straight road. The road ended with a blind curve to the right and 100m before the blind curve there was a pedestrian crossing.
Even though all drivers knew they would need to brake for the blind curve (it was visible and there were signs) the majority of them used to drive very fast and basically did not let people cross the road, only to push very hard on the brakes 10 meters beyond the pedestrian crossing.
The road design is what causes bad or good driving. The road you describe should narrow before the blind curve so the drivers would (often enough unconsciously) slow down before it. For the pedestrian crossing, small islands that separate the lanes and give pedestrians a safe space will help.
The bright side of roundabouts and (curbs) annd curves is that they create better (more cautious, observing) drivers, with minor consequences (like hitting a curb).
For lowering the high speed, we can also stack roundabouts, curbs (ie diverge and coverage the road).
The other positive of raised curbs is that we can add shrubbery as a natural traffic barrier, and there are some nice safety impacts from this too, such as reduced road runoff / flash flooding - and environmental factors like shade and cooling.
Aside from the debate, 600k seems insanely high for this intersection. No wonder this country's infrastructure is crumbling when it takes over half a million dollars to put in a few lights.
You've got the capital costs of having the several lights, built for 24/7 operation, plus the traffic controller. Then you've got to wire that up, and get an electrical connection for the controller box. Plus all the cuts in the pavement for vehicle detectors. Additionally the pedestrian intend to cross buttons and accessibility indicators for pedestrians. And you may need to resurface before or after, and redraw the lines. Likely you'll need signs. Possibly any other curb work that had been neglected, but needs to be done on a new project.
Plus it costs money to do the traffic survey and analysis to decide if you wanted to build the thing in the first place, and to determine the cycle timings. If you need to run an environmental impact report, that's more money on analysis.
Here's some estimates for component prices https://wbt.dot.state.fl.us/ois/tsmo/TrafficSignalBudgetingC... which I don't think includes installation. Probably $50k to $100k for the hardware, but there's a lot of labor, and engineering time.
This sort of work usually costs 3x what is should, because the firm doing the work has to pay state minimum wage and/or hire union labor.
Minimum wage in California seems to be $16 an hour. I doubt this intersection took 37 500 man-hours to finish, so I don't think the cost is explained by wages. Also, $200K would still seem like a gigantic amount of money for adding stop lights to a single intersection.
You probably need an engineer. A couple. They might have to run traffic studies beforehand to estimate the design requirements and light timing. They might have to consider other network nodes beyond this in their modeling. They might have to also run studies afterward to retime the lights to meet realized demand.
I’m surprised its not a $6m project honestly.
There's a proposal to redo a playground in San Mateo's central park—bids have come in around $16M.
https://www.cityofsanmateo.org/4142/Central-Park-Playground-...
It's a nice playground design for sure, but it's kind of amazing to consider what could be built privately for the same amount. You could literally build a palace on a giant estate with fancy landscaping, a swimming pool, tennis courts, movie theater, etc.
Of course there are reasons why public projects are more expensive, but it does seem pretty crazy on the surface.
the issue is the prevailing wage requirement (3x+ minimum wage). it would be easy to complete this cheaply with just minimum wage labor
It's a 34 second video. One enters the intersection after the light has turned red (pause the video, you can see it). The other is half way through the intersection before the light turns red, definitely speeds up to make the light, which is what they're talking about.
Pedestrian "annoyed" by driver, funeral details to follow
think it’s just on the margin - they’re in the intersection in this shot and it’s not illegal (at least where i’m from) to be in the intersection when the light turns red
"pedestrians have to press the beg button, wait for the light to cycle through its routine, and then walk across the street"
Quite often what happens is
- Pedestrian presses button
- Light doesn't change for 30 seconds and there are no cars in sight
- Pedestrian goes "fuck it" and crosses
- Light changes red, after pedestrian is done crossing
- Car comes along and gets stopped at red light for 30 seconds
I wonder why these buttons don't immediately allow pedestrians to cross (maybe with some rate limiting to avoid abuse).
That, or even use sensors to detect pedestrians coming along that are likely to want to cross, estimate their crossing time based on their walking speed, and make their light turn "go" as soon as they hit the intersection.
Some intersections have exactly this for cars already.
I know it as the "California Roll" - to slow down but continue to cruise through stop signs.
In my own country, where stop signs are relatively rare anyway, this behavior is so common that it doesn't even have a name. I think it's much more unexpected here to see anyone truly stop at a stop sign on an empty street than it is to see them slow down and then continue on. And I would bet police would not bat an eye 99% of the time if they saw someone do it.
The county where I live recently (within the last couple of years) redid a two-way stop along the road I take to work. It used to be east-west that had the stop signs, but for some reason they switched them to north-south. Even more baffling, they didn't repaint the stop lines so east-west still had those and north-south didn't. It effectively turned the intersection into a four-way stop with extra confusion, frustration, and danger.
They eventually turned it into an actual four-way, thankfully. I think everyone would have been happier if they just hadn't messed with it in the first place.
Cars run stop signs too. They also speed. That’s an enforcement opportunity.
Claiming this makes the intersection less safe despite the engineering studies that were conducted is a claim made without evidence. Pedestrians not having permanent right of way isn’t a safety issue, as the author admits, it’s a convenience issue.
It seems like the author is against cars in principle and uses that bias to complain about something that makes it easier for cars despite having no demonstrable impact on safety.
I live near Barcelona and in the city, stop signs are very rare. Its signals everywhere aside from little low-traffic back streets — and Barcelona is perfectly walkable. Cars are more likely to roll through a four way stop than a red traffic light — especially if they don’t see any conflicting traffic. And at night, stop signs are less safe because you might be pulling out and a pedestrian walks out in front of you — while with traffic signals, it’s clear whose turn it is. Cyclists also seem more prone to ignoring 4-way stops than traffic lights.
Here’s a study from Montreal that, among its other conclusions, showed that signals had no impact on pedestrian-vehicle interactions.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...
“… the models were unable to demonstrate a significant relationship between stop signs and vehicle–pedestrian interactions. Therefore, drawing conclusions regarding pedestrian safety is difficult.”
> With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign. Why don’t lights ever sit idle with the pedestrian crossing on and the cars must wait?
Where I live, this doesn't happen because there's not enough pedestrians to justify it. When I drive in Seattle, the lights never idle, but pedestrian cycles are always included.
With a non-scramble intersection, not including pedestrians by default allows for faster cycling, including for pedestrians that want to cross the alternate way. With a scramble intersection, I'd bet if a pedestrian shows up and pushes the button, an idle green will go yellow immediately. Yes, it's a longer wait than crossing immediately as you would at an idle intersection, but now you can cross diagonally, so that may be a win.
It's worth checking with the traffic engineer to see how they would decide to always include a pedestrian cycle, perhaps during times of high pedestrian use like during hours where students are likely to cross the street between classes.
Too late to edit, but another option which may be too late for this intersection would be to add intend to cross buttons (or other ways of detecting pedestrian intent) farther from the intersection. Many intersections have vehicle detectors farther from the intersection which allows the traffic controller to reduce waiting by lengthening or reducing cycle times in anticipation of traffic that will arrive soon. For example: if there is a dominate traffic direction, the controller can idle at green, and traffic in that direction will often not have to wait. With detectors only at the light, traffic in the opposite direction would need to wait when it arrives; with further back sensors, traffic in the opposite direction can initiate a cycle change earlier and may not need to come to a stop at all. Or cycles in one direction can be lengthened if there is traffic detected at the light and at the further back sensor, which indicates potentially high demand in that direction, especially if the further back sensor stays active which could indicate vehicles are backed up all the way to that sensor. That's less applicable for a pedestrian detector, pedestrian backups are uncommon unless there's an event, at which point it's common to use police/traffic officers to direct traffic or a specialized event mode enabled by a physical control supervised by an officer; but indicators of more pedestrians does justify increasing the pedestrian cycle time.
So he is saying that people are running the red lights but were not running the stop signs. I would bet good money that the people willing to run the red lights would be more likely to run the stop signs than not, especially if they know there are stop signs on the other road.
People usually slow down to run stop signs, but speed up to run red lights.
I don't understand how anyone that actually walks and/or drives in north america can come to that conclusion.
When a driver is speeding up to "make" a yellow light their attention turns to nothing but the yellow light or even worse the state of the next intersection/light beyond the one they are speeding through. The existence of the green/yellow light gives drivers carte blanche to not need to think about the current state of the crossing because "the light tells me there should be nothing there anyways".
Where as a driver slowing down to "roll" a stop sign has their attention set to basically the opposite. They are generally focused on things like, is there a car I'm going to hit? is there a pedestrian crossing? is there a cop down the street waiting to give me a ticket?
Interesting thing here is blinking red for pedestrians before it turns solid red, indicating that you should finish crossing.
In Poland blinking green has the same meaning.
In Berlin and Sydney green for pedestrians is very short and basically lets you enter the crossing. But red doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the crossing. You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing. It feels way better from pedestrian perspective when compared to Polish system where green means you are safe, blinking green means you need to run for your life and red means that drivers can legally run you over and you are about die (they can't but that's how it feels).
> You can take as much time as you need to finish crossing.
Well, up to a certain extent at least. Behind the scenes, German traffic lights for example usually assume you continue walking at 1.2 m/s – if you start crossing at the last possible moment and are slower than that, you will still run into the case where crossing traffic will potentially get a green signal with you still on the road.
Thanks for clarification.
Sure, but as a pedestrian you have no way of telling if you took too long so the burden of not hitting you is firmly placed on the drivers.
In Poland it's bit more muddy in drivers' minds. If they hit a pedestrian who was still crossing the road while the light for him was red they think it's partially pedestrian's fault because he shouldn't be there.
I'm not a traffic engineer, but I think making this junction more 'European' would mean one or more of:
- Forbidding on-street parking close to the junction, improving pedestrian visibility.
- Removing the sweeping curves and replacing them with sharp curves, which reduces the speed drivers can turn, and reduces the distance (thus time) pedestrians are in the road.
- Adjusting road priorities
But maybe it's a lost cause. What's described as a "walkable center" in the article seems to be a multi-lane traffic circle with some landscaping surrounded by excessively wide roads and lots of parked cars. I don't see a single pedestrian-only street.
Could someone explain why we always put pedestrian crossings at intersections?
I've always felt like that is the most unsafe place for a crossing. In my city, there are a few pedestrian crossings with lights recessed from intersections. The lights turn on only when someone bumps the crossing button (which isn't super common) and only 2 ways of traffic need to stop/watch out.
The street grid is also where the sidewalks are. Moving crossings away from intersections would mean anyone walking in a straight line has to do a 500ft+ detour every block. They make sense in some specific situations but don't work as a general solution.
1) it makes the travel of a pedestrian going straight become a zig zag where you have to weave into streets that you don't care about. You end up minimizing distance for cars but maximizing distance for pedestrians. It should be the other way around
2) HAWK signals, which are pedestrian buttons affecting lights on pedestrian crossings away from intersections (usually on stroads) have been shown to be worse than nothing because drivers don't really notice them nor the pedestrians (in drivers heads "intersection" equals "watch out for cross traffic, everywhere else it's "go forward and pay attention to the car in front of you"), and pulls some pedestrians to an unwarranted sense of safety.
3) "which isn't super common" tells me that this a very car dependent place. There's a mid block pedestrian light on mission between 1st and 2nd in SF, and there's always someone waiting on it to change. Part of the reason it's there is because there's a straight pedestrian route that allows you to get from Market Street to the terminal.
because drivers generally actually stop at red lights? pedestrian crossings in the middle of the road are typically much less safe in my experience because a considerably proportion of drivers do not yield. i think driving norms in other countries around yielding to crosswalks also seem to be different aka non-existent
I think the real reason this happened is staring the author in the face. He noted the necessary engineering and construction work, and some of the price tags for that and the maintenance. I think this has less to do with any car-friendly ideology, conscious or unconscious, and it's just a boondoggle for engineering, construction, and maintenance firms.
Example of an insideously unsafe intersection that was changed to make it safer (for bike riders):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU
How it was fixed:
As someone who lives in The Netherlands I basically just don't understand anything about traffic/pedestrian engineering in the USA. I travel to the USA quite frequently and I never quite know what the rules are as a pedestrian.
I've learned to look both ways and move quickly, but I don't have the confidence or assertiveness that I do at home.
Saving seconds for cars is important. It adds up across all the intersections they cross, and makes travel time shorter. These safetyism arguments are tired because they never honestly consider the tradeoffs, particularly that cars have lots of benefits.
Driver and pedestrian are not immutable characteristics. A driver you slow down in one intersection becomes a pedestrian you made more safe and saved time for in another. I agree that analyzing the tradeoffs are important but the broader picture is that in the US' dense urban environments, many of the benefits of cars are that they allow you to avoid pedestrian hostile infrastructure.
The wheel and spokes of a road network should prioritize cars and most urbanists will concede that, but hubs have a wildly different set of constraints. Picking a one-size-fits-all cost to slowing down drivers completely ignores that reality to the detriment of pedestrians and drivers.
This is my take in a nutshell. Instead of trying to force pedestrians and bikers to share with cars, we could go one level better and fully remove pedestrians and bikers from these roads until a city fund for building them a proper bike-only lane has fully matured. The only reason we force them to share public roads is because it seems logical, but the physics and logistics just doesn't work well.
They get a concrete maturation date on funding the bike-only lane construction, and also get to die another way than being hit by a truck.
That'd only make sense if your pedestrian network is completely independent from the road network, so pedestrians only need to cross roads, but otherwise never interact with them.
However the usual case is that pedestrians have to walk along the road because there's no separate independent pedestrian network, and in that case not providing crosswalks at intersections forces detours on everybody wanting to walk straight on ahead.
Drivers would have to stop more and they have far more political power than pedestrians so this won’t happen. Many large cities have crosswalks away from intersections and drivers tend to ignore them
"With the change, the light always sits green for drivers on Palm, so cars are now always flying through that street when they previously had to stop at a stop sign"
I used to encounter an infuriating version of this during my commute through SF Mission Bay. There were several lights that clearly were on a timer but wouldn't show the walk signal for pedestrians unless you had pressed the button before the current cycle. In practice this meant that I'd arrive at the intersection that had one or two cars waiting at a red light. This was clearly when I could have gotten a walk signal with no other changes required. However, without the signal I had no idea when it would switch and couldn't walk in front the waiting cars. So I typically ended up waiting till the light turned green for the cars, they drove off and I then crossed as a pedestrian while cars clearly had a green signal but they were gone. I would have had to wait another minute or so for the proper right of way to come around again. Totally bonkers outcome to have to wait for the cars to get a green signal. This would never happen the other way around.
>The story focuses on a redesign of one intersection in this town. The case highlights how we’ve elevated the value of moving cars quickly at the expense of everything else, even in highly walkable areas.
We should all expect this kind of regressing in walking. Pedestrians and cyclists don't seem to understand how this always will be a car-by-default country due to lifestyle. Yes, there are several cities bucking the trend with exceptions, but those exceptions are either economically able to buck that car-first engineering trend and build massive bike and walking infra or they have exceptional transportation alternatives (train, bus, and subway).
You think pedestrians and cyclists don't realize how car dominant we are?
Correct. They expect safe walking and biking infra to fall from the sky and complain online when it does not.
Pedestrians rightfully expect safe walking and biking infrastructure.
Not everyone can drive. Most of those who can't drive also cannot afford a taxi or rideshare. Many of them also do not have friends or family who can get them where they need to go, and reliance on others is extremely demoralizing to independence.
That says nothing of the carbon cost in fuel, the microparticle cost in tire and brake dust, or other inflated pollutants.
The U.S.'s car-dominant infrastructure is a tragedy.
"Car-centrism" isn't some immutable property given to the US at the dawn of time. Infrastructure is built according to people's opinions, and in a democracy you change those people's opinions (or replace them altogether) by complaining.
And I don't think pedestrian infrastructure advocates expect it to "fall from the sky". They expect it to be built by municipalities over time, just like everyone else.
this is a very uncharitable characterization of communities' desires for safe, quiet, and walkable/bikeable neighborhoods
The way you make your kids safe bikers:
1. NEVER RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK. Cars on the street cannot see you due to other parked cars and WILL make right or left turn on you. Additionaly, cars coming out of parking lots won't see you on the sidewalk.
2. NEVER RIDE ON OPPOSITE SIDE. Ride on the same direction as cars, make yourself visible.
3. INDICATE ALL TURNS WITH HAND SIGNALS. Be predictable. Don't just turn or otherwise behave unpredictably. Indicate turns, make eye contact and then turn.
4. (Obvious) ACT LIKE A CAR AND DON'T RUN LIGHTS.
> 1. NEVER RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK. Cars on the street cannot see you due to other parked cars and WILL make right or left turn on you. Additionaly, cars coming out of parking lots won't see you on the sidewalk.
How about to avoid hitting people walking? It's not always safe for pedestrians to jump into the street to avoid a guy on a bike.
> 3. INDICATE ALL TURNS WITH HAND SIGNALS. Be predictable. Don't just turn or otherwise behave unpredictably. Indicate turns, make eye contact and then turn.
You should also explain to them that 99% of drivers will not understand the typical bike hand signals. Making eye contact will help a lot, but mostly it makes sure they're watching you.
1. Your 5 year old kid with her pink bike should not be on the street alone. This is just a matter of judgement, independent from other motorists. You should be behind her watching for cars. 2. If you want to ignore point 1, my argument still stands. The chances of a Dodge Ram 3500 ramming into her is far higher if she is on the sidewalk as opposed to on the street. A 5 year old doesn't understand traffic rules good enough to be riding on the side walk and watching for cars. Her best chances are to make herself as visible as possible (ie. by being on the road in a bright bike and protective gear).
"Whether car, scooter, bike, or feet, look both ways before crossing a street"
Nonsense, the money spent on safer roads is an investment on human lives. Infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every few decades and with good planning roads that are being resurfaced anyways can be altered at little extra cost. Finally, let's not ignore that suburban sprawl is economically not viable for cities as the cost per household is higher in sprawl compared to a denser populated area. Changing the last point is obviously the toughest.
https://cayimby.org/blog/sprawl-costs-the-u-s-1-trillion-eve... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmQomKCfYZY
The placement of the traffic lights behind the intersection, and not in front of it, is just hilariously incompetent.
As a frequent pedestrian, the question of traffic light vs four-way stop sign depends on the details. Here are some factors:
- In NYC, for example, right turn on red is illegal within the five boroughs (you can always spot NJ drivers you don't know this or don't care). Right turning on red is incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians, way more than traffic lights vs four-way stop signs;
- How often the light changes is a HUGE factor. I've read that there are some pedestrian crossings in LA at lights that take up to 10 minutes to change. Ridiculous. But in NYC, or at least Manhattan, light changes are quick. I suspect it's designed so a pedestrian never has to wait more than ~45 seconds;
- One way streets are better than two-way streets. There are less variables to be concerned with. Drivers may not like one-way streets. They're demonstrably better for traffic flow, pedestrians and cyclists however;
- Having an island in the middle of a two-way road is HUGELY helpful to both cyclists and pedestrians. The ability to cross halfway in relative safety makes an incredible difference;
- Having separate walk lights for each direction when there is an island is the absolute worst. This typically hugely increases the time to cross as they aren't coordinated;
- The speed limit matters. If the speed limit is under 25, cars rarely go too fast to be a problem. I've had Google Maps street directions that were basically "just make a run for it" across a highway with a speed limit of 45. There are places that say a road has a cycle path that is basically the hard shoulder on an interstate. Drivers will weave through those at 70+ to overtake 1 car. People have died that way;
- Traffic lights can decrease safety because drivers will speed up to make a yellow light. Usually I don't even have to look at a traffic light to tell when it turns yellow. I'll hear the engines revving up. I've nearly been killed this way when a driver accelerated to make what was a red light and they sped through a pedestrian crossing that had signalled pedestrians had right of way. This doesn't tend to happen at four-way stops.
- As a cyclist, I tend to find drivers give you deference at four-way stops but this may depend on the area and if it has a lot of cyclists and pedestrians. I actually prefer to give drivers the right-of-way when they have it. For example, a driver may stop at a four-way stop seeing me coming when they got there first and should just go. And I know I wasn't going fast enough to interfere with them anyway. This forces me to ride in front of them when they have right of way. I never like doing that.
So it's hard for me to judge this particular intersection without knowing the full context.
> pedestrians have to press the beg button
Please. This is the most drama-queen characterisation of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing I've ever seen. In fact it's the first time I've seen anyone grinding their teeth at the injustice of a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing.
Hopefully it's not the last. We need to flip the script on cars vs pedestrians, especially since there has been a long history of anti-pedestrian propaganda funded by the automobile industry.
Meanwhile, car-centric environments contribute to air pollution and sedentary lifestyles. They limit public spaces, reducing community interactions and fostering loneliness, while also exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities by obstructing access to jobs and essential services for those unwilling or unable to burn cash on these inefficient, extravagant rolling idols of conspicuous consumption.
Their environmental impact, I shouldn't have to remind you, doesn't end with urban sprawl leading to inefficient land use and loss of green spaces, but includes, of course, plant-rocking CO2 emissions.
So, yeah, I think it's pretty debased that we featherless bypeds have to press a single goddamn button to tread a single square foot of earth in deference to cars.
I'm a pedestrian, and a car driver, and a cyclist and I think this is a reasonable way to control an intersection. Anti-car urbanism is sliding into being a bit of a pseudo-religion for cranks IMO.
I want to confirm that it's a religion for me. I'm not a spandex-wearing hobbyist; I ride my bike or take public transit because it is practical and inexpensive. I do not bike for fun.
The structure of the built environment which accommodates automobiles is hostile to human life. It has been—in the short run—convenient for the growth of a certain type of economy which is also hostile—in the long run—to human life.
As Ben Franklin might say, we have paid too dearly in blood, turf, and CO2 for this strip mall whistle.
If anything is worth the reverence of worship—and perhaps nothing, in your philosophy, is—few candidates can compete with the human life, community, and sustainable industry which a car-centric environment precludes.
Edit: Oh, except maybe the natural world it threatens.
I see decisions of the same type being made in the suburbs around here all the time, and the prioritization is identical. I think the issue is suburbanites and small-town folks generally have not experienced a walkable environment and don't understand how pleasant it can be. They are usually ensconced in cars and go isolated from one destination to another without actually touching the community at all.
I was trying to advocate for bike lanes and no-through traffic for a few streets near our small town's historic center a few months ago, and I'm sorry to say, to the community, I think I sounded like a weird European hippy. Even though I'm totally not a hippy and I'm American-born. I'm as capitalist as you can get. But I still think if the state is going to make design decisions on our streets, we should make decisions that make our neighborhoods better and ultimately more inviting and valuable.
The main opposition to what I was proposing was coming from neighborhoods that must commute from further beyond the city center to get to the highway that connects our town to the nearest major city. We have other, faster, wider roads to get to the highway from all parts of our town, but there are people that are adamant that during rush hour, they must be allowed to potentially commute through the historic downtown, and residential neighborhoods, to avoid traffic jams.
I was trying to explain that the bottlenecks are always the main streets that have the highway on-ramps, but to no avail. People like having many potential, fast routes to the highway, and they are deeply uncomfortable with you removing some routes even if they rarely use those routes themselves.
In other words, occasional car use is more important than daily, frequent pedestrian use.
And where were the pedestrians during this town-hall? For whatever reason there were none. Or if there were, they were silent. I was trying to understand why nobody else was speaking up when there are so many bikers, kids, parents with strollers, walkers with dogs, etc., using these streets that will be impacted by bad decision-making, and my conclusion is that young active people, and those with kids, have no time to go to town-halls. And the kinds of people that do go to town-halls are weirdos with design fetishes, like me, and extremely ornery and conservative people who see any change in their town as an assault on the AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE by perverted European-hippy Democratic Degenerates (into which category I have unfortunately been slotted it seems, though I'm embarrassingly capitalist and libertarian).
I would not suggest this will be the median experience in America. My town has a fair number of MAGA lawn signs, American flags, lifted trucks, Punisher stickers, etc., in addition to the tech community. So its a very specific kind of mix. I'm sure those of you in Berkeley or San Francisco will have much better luck.
My community has some of the strangest dynamics you have ever seen.
I think you’re actually describing a pretty normal experience of who goes to those sorts of meetings (people with lots of time on their hands)
It sounds like you’ve possibly already headed down a similar line of reasoning (or possibly read it already) but I’d recommend you check out the book “Strong Towns”. It’s got a ton of overlap with the ideas you’ve brought up.
Police stopped enforcing in my city too. And 10% of drivers know this. People will keeping chipping away at the safety margins until people start dying. Then maybe police will do their job and those 10% of drivers will start worrying about manslaughter charges.
The Texas government decided that red light cameras can't enforce the law. That's how car-brained we are.
Muh privacy or something.
The core issue is those red light cameras create a persistent database of who is where, which is then sold at a marginal cost to whoever wants it to advertise to/manipulate/track a population. Adding cameras everywhere invites a dystopian nightmare vs better urban design and occasional traffic police would solve the same problem.
Write the legislation so data is not retained/sold. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
"occasional traffic police" have proven ineffective at enforcing the law.
And biased humans deciding who to pull over is a lot more of a "dystopian nightmare" than cameras which eliminate those problems entirely https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2402547121
i grew up somewhere that had red light cameras, the idea that they are selling the data is BS justification for diminished state capacity to enforce something really important.
e: for those downvoting, please point me to a single case of a municipality selling red light violation data if this is such a real concern
Knew before I clicked: it's a flat 4-way intersection of two large-ish streets where there is ample space for something else. Hint: draw a small circle in the middle of the intersection and take down the damn stop signs.