M II A II R II K
Senior Member
Narrow roads often work better than wide ones
By Philip Langdon
Read More: http://newurbannetwork.com/article/narrow-roads-often-work-better-wide-ones-15174
Website: Urban Thoroughfares Manual is "The Right Fix" for Connecting Streets, Connecting Communities.
During the Institute of Transportation Enginers' annual meeting in St. Louis last week, Heather Smith, program director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, hailed the response that a CNU-ITE manual — Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach — has generated.
- LaPlante, Smith, and Jefferey Riegner of Whiteman, Requardt, and Associates discussed complete streets and multimodal level of service as part of a panel discussion at the conference. How can many roads be made safer? LaPlante said that installing signal countdown timers at intersections reduces the crash rate by 25 percent. The new MUTCD manual is requiring these signals.
- LaPlante pointed out that completes streets are a must and showed the benefits of designing speeds to Level of Service D. LaPlante also pointed out that we need better ways to measure non-motorized travel. He referred to TRB's latest Highway Capacity manual (due out in September) that contains more advanced methods of analyzing pedestrian level of service.
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• Designing wider roads means more time for pedestrians to cross, which in turn means more wait times for cars.
• Designing more wait times for pedestrians means most cars will go 45 mph on major thoroughfares and stop for 2 minutes instead of going along at 30 mph with less stopping time.
• In scenarios with narrower streets engineers can actually increase car capacity because there is less time for pedestrians to cross the street.
• Mid-block crossings are safer for pedestrians because there is traffic coming from 2 directions instead of 4 at intersections.
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By Philip Langdon
Read More: http://newurbannetwork.com/article/narrow-roads-often-work-better-wide-ones-15174
Website: Urban Thoroughfares Manual is "The Right Fix" for Connecting Streets, Connecting Communities.
During the Institute of Transportation Enginers' annual meeting in St. Louis last week, Heather Smith, program director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, hailed the response that a CNU-ITE manual — Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach — has generated.
- LaPlante, Smith, and Jefferey Riegner of Whiteman, Requardt, and Associates discussed complete streets and multimodal level of service as part of a panel discussion at the conference. How can many roads be made safer? LaPlante said that installing signal countdown timers at intersections reduces the crash rate by 25 percent. The new MUTCD manual is requiring these signals.
- LaPlante pointed out that completes streets are a must and showed the benefits of designing speeds to Level of Service D. LaPlante also pointed out that we need better ways to measure non-motorized travel. He referred to TRB's latest Highway Capacity manual (due out in September) that contains more advanced methods of analyzing pedestrian level of service.
.....
• Designing wider roads means more time for pedestrians to cross, which in turn means more wait times for cars.
• Designing more wait times for pedestrians means most cars will go 45 mph on major thoroughfares and stop for 2 minutes instead of going along at 30 mph with less stopping time.
• In scenarios with narrower streets engineers can actually increase car capacity because there is less time for pedestrians to cross the street.
• Mid-block crossings are safer for pedestrians because there is traffic coming from 2 directions instead of 4 at intersections.
.....