Anyone who’s been to Midtown Manhattan during rush hour — or seen it depicted on TV and in movies — knows it’s nothing short of a nightmare to navigate. As pedestrians clog crosswalks, buses lumber down 42nd Street seemingly in slow motion, plodding along at an average rate of 3.2 miles per hour. Car riders don’t fare much better; at an average pace of 4.7 mph, they might as well be walking.
And things are only getting worse, says traffic expert and engineer Sam Schwartz. “People are starting to cry uncle,” Schwartz says, likening the growing fury over the gridlock to a scene out of the 1970s movie “Network.” “They’re going to start screaming out of their cars, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!’”
As a member of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Fix NYC panel, Schwartz was instrumental in the passage of New York’s congestion pricing program — the first in the country — which the city plans to roll out in 2021. Though details of the plan are still being ironed out, like how much to charge motorists and who should qualify for exemptions, Schwartz has high hopes that other U.S. cities will follow its lead.
Once considered too politically untenable to be embraced by car-loving Americans, the idea — which imposes a fee to drive on certain roads during peak times — has been slowly inching closer to the mainstream, as cities from Boston and Philadelphia to San Francisco and Seattle debate congestion pricing plans of their own. While public support of such measures remains mixed, it’s clear that something needs to be done.
Americans are driving more than ever. In 2018, we collectively traversed a record-setting 3.3 trillion miles on our nation’s already shaky network of roads and bridges. We also spent an average of 97 hours sitting in traffic, which cost each of us about $1,348 in wasted time and fuel (for unlucky Bostonians, that figure spikes to $2,291, the most of any U.S. city). On Chicago’s crowded Stevenson Expressway, commuters face a grueling 26-minute delay every workday.
Enter congestion pricing. Though it has a long and successful history in global centers like Singapore, Milan and London, Americans are loathe to pay for the privilege of driving. (Worth noting: When Stockholm announced its congestion pricing plan in 2006, there was little to no public backing. After six months, support skyrocketed as residents in Sweden’s capital began to fully appreciate the thinned-out traffic.)
“We have a tendency not to charge motorists what they cost to society,” says Schwartz. At the same time, several states haven’t raised fuel taxes in years, if not decades, while the federal government hasn’t touched gas tax rates since 1993. Add to that the fact that cars are more fuel-efficient than ever, “and there’s barely any money,” he says.
That leaves major metropolises in a lurch as they work to improve the crumbling infrastructure that so many of their residents rely on. As a measure to strengthen and advance existing transit options, most congestion pricing plans recommend reinvesting the revenue from tolls back into the transportation system. In New York, where motorists could be charged up to $25 for driving in Midtown and lower Manhattan, that translates to an estimated $1 billion per year redirected to the city’s decaying public transit system.
Besides boosting revenue and easing traffic flow, congestion pricing also has proven benefits to public health and the environment. In Stockholm, the tax reduced common air pollutants by up to 15 percent and led to a significant decrease in acute asthma attacks among children. (In the U.S., the heavily trafficked Bronx has the highest levels of childhood asthma.)
Despite these positives, pushback to congestion charging exists, and not only because Americans dislike paying for something they historically haven’t had to pay for. Critics of pricing plans point to an undue burden on the city’s low-income residents, who often don’t live where reliable mass transit options are available and thus are more likely to drive in to dense urban centers.
Still, that’s not a one-size-fits-all argument, says Annie Nam of the Southern California Association of Governments, who spearheaded a recent study on establishing congestion pricing zones in Los Angeles. There’s a lot of misconceptions around who drives where, when and why, she says.
“The predominance of low-income people [in the zones we studied] are actually already using public transit or carpooling. So the question is more, ‘How do we better facilitate the sustainable travel that they’re already taking?’”
In the past, local governments turned to new construction or expanded existing roadways to deal with traffic overflow. But studies have shown that, as the Brookings Institute put it, “more road building in order to try to move vehicles faster often makes traffic worse.” Express or carpool lanes, whose popularity has risen over the past several decades, also don’t necessarily live up to their congestion-reducing hype.
Though they live on opposite coasts in cities with very different traffic patterns, both Schwartz and Nam see congestion pricing as the next logical step in the evolution of designing road systems that operate more efficiently.
“There’s a lot of energy around the idea,” says Schwartz, who points out that even Uber, whose rise has contributed to clogged streets from Manhattan, New York, to Manhattan, Kansas, poured millions into lobbying for the adoption of the plan.
With New York moving forward, Nam is betting that a ripple effect will take hold. “The general public becoming more aware of what it is and how it can work [leads to] a sense of normalcy,” she says, “and that there’s an opportunity to do this in the U.S.”
Tag: traffic
The Road to Infrastructure Improvements Starts with This App
Tired of endless delays that leave you waiting at bus stops and train stations? Frustrated by being stuck in traffic during your daily commute? Spending part of your vacation stuck on the tarmac?
Thanks to the team at Building America’s Future (BAF), a bipartisan coalition advocating investment in the country’s infrastructure, there’s now an app for that: I’m Stuck.
The free app, available for both iOS and Android, allows disgruntled travelers to document delays, jams and overcrowding in our transit system, automatically forwarding a location and picture to their member of Congress. I’m Stuck channels all that griping about our inefficient, outmoded and underfunded infrastructure into direct political action. Although it may not provide instant relief for travel-related woes, a groundswell of disapproval may draw politicians attention to the problem over the long haul.
“Usually commuters think traffic is like weather: It is something that happens to them, and they have no control over it. But that isn’t the case at all,” says former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who co-chairs BAF with former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray La Hood, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “The policies we put in place, or the lack of a coherent long-term infrastructure plan, directly impacts the daily experience of Americans trying to get around their communities. This app gives commuters and passengers a tool to voice their frustrations to Congress. It is called ‘I’m Stuck,’ but the truth is America is stuck until Washington takes action.”
It’s clear that American’s infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. In their latest annual report, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation a failing grade of D+. To get the country where it needs to be by 2020, they suggest at least $3.6 trillion needs to be invested in unstable bridges, congested airports and pothole-riddled roads.
BAF’s team says the idea for the app arose during brainstorming sessions about how to engage the public in a notoriously dry topic. Instead of circulating petitions about bills like Sen. Bernie Sander’s $1 trillion investment plan, a $50 billion bond sale or a proposed hike in the gas tax — topics that, they say, frankly make people’s eyes glaze over — BAF encourages people to share their everyday experience as it happens. (For safety, they suggest passing your phone to a disgruntled passenger if driving.) So far, the app has been downloaded 16,180 times across all 50 states, and more than 12,000 emails have been sent to representatives in Congress.
“‘I’m Stuck’ is going to bring elected officials closer to the people on the ground,” says BAF’s president Marcia Hale, sharing with them the everyday “pain and frustration of outdated and overburdened transportation systems.”
If the app registers enough irritation about gridlock on the freeway, as BAF hopes, it could eventually beat the worst gridlock in the country: the one that clogs the halls of Congress.
Want to see where your fellow Americans are getting stuck? Check out the interactive map here.
(Homepage image: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
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How Boston Is Looking to Mirrors to Protect Cyclists
Building safer roads for cyclists is fast becoming a priority in many cities across the country, but Boston is taking it a step further by asking other drivers to take safety precautions, too.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is proposing an ordinance asking that all trucks weighing in at 10,000 pounds or more begin installing side guards and curved mirrors designed to help prevent cyclist deaths.
“The Act to Protect Vulnerable Road Users” was created in partnership with the city’s New Urban Mechanics innovation lab. The design was developed in the wake of an increase in Boston cyclist deaths in 2012, which mostly involved accidents with large automobiles like trucks and buses, according to New Urban Mechanics program director Kris Carter.
Between summer and fall of 2012, five cyclists were killed, according to the Boston’s Cyclist Safety Report. This past July alone, two cyclists were injured after colliding with trucks, Boston.com reports.
“If a cyclist is continuing straight, a common crash is a vehicle turns right and doesn’t necessarily see the cyclist,” Carter tells Fast Company, noting that the danger lies with those bikers getting pulled under a vehicle. “It’s pretty rare that a cyclist who goes underneath the vehicle survives.
The New Urban Mechanics lab ran a pilot program using three designs on 16 trucks. Should the new ordinance pass, oversized trucks will be required to be outfitted with the side rails and convex mirrors along with bright, reflective stickers to indicate blind spots for cyclists and pedestrians. Carter estimates that the new features will cost about $1,200 to $1,800 per vehicle.
“Really, this is a public health issue, because before we can talk about cycling and wanting to strengthen, improve and expand infrastructure, we must first be honest that the critical component is to improve ridership,” says Councilor-at-Large Ayanna Pressley, who is one of the lawmakers spearheading the ordinance. “People have to feel safe.”
While it may be new territory for American municipalities, mandatory side guards have been in practice in many European cities. In fact, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board made a recommendation earlier this year that regulators should make side guards mandatory on new trucks.
We’re glad to see one American city driving change for safer roads.
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The Verdict on Protected Bike Lanes
New York City traffic can be brutal, and adding bike lanes had some locals concerned it would only add to the congested Manhattan streets. But the protected bike lanes has actually improved traffic flow, according to a new report from the city.
The city’s Department of Transportation amassed empirical data on the 30 miles of protected bicycle lanes added across the city since 2007, finding that the bike-friendly paths are a boon to both reducing traffic and pedestrian safety.
The report found that some streets with the newfangled lanes are now faster, due in part to a safety feature requiring cars turning left to wait in a pocket. The new design reduces risk of cars hitting pedestrians and also eliminates cars blocking traffic while waiting to turn.
“Having that left turning area, where you’re able to get out of the flow, you can see the cyclist, the cyclist can see the turning vehicle, you can pause and not feel the pressure from behind to make a quick movement,” says Josh Benson, director of bicycle and pedestrian programs for the city’s Department of Transportation. “That’s a major major safety feature of these type of bike lanes. But it also helps the flow.”
Safety is one of the biggest benefits of adding the lanes, as pedestrian injuries have dropped 22 percent while total injuries are down 20 percent. Crashes with injuries have also decreased by 17 percent. One possible reason why: The bike lanes have shortened crosswalks and made them more visible to drivers.
More interestingly, the city points out the bike lanes have been economically beneficial. Local businesses on streets redesigned with the paths saw an uptick in retail sales and have been associated with more jobs and more tourism foot traffic.
For the city’s anti-cyclists, the new report means the bike safety program is here to stay.
“It’s our plan to do five miles of protected bike lanes every year going forward,” Benson tells Fast Company. “That’s actually about 100 city blocks of protected bike lanes, so that’s a huge chunk of city streets every year.”
But as the report reveals, adding bike lanes is beneficial for every type of transportation on New York’s crowded streets. Next time you’re grumbling about passing cyclists, remember, they’re helping you move faster.
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The New Way That Tennessee is Reducing Auto Fatalities
If you place a candy bar in front of a young boy, you can predict that he’s going to eat it. And if it’s cloudy outside, you might be able to predict that it’s going to rain. But is there any way that you can predict where a car crash is going to happen?
Turns out, you can — by using predictive analytics. And that’s exactly the technology that Tennessee is tapping to promote traffic safety and prevent major accidents from happening.
Under the “Crash Reduction Analyzing Statistical History” (C.R.A.S.H.) program, Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officers factor in data points ranging from festivals and sporting events to weather patterns and areas with a history of accidents to create predictions of where they should deploy their resources.
The program spans five-by-six-mile squares, providing predictions for four-hour periods each day.
“So it might show that between 6 and 10 p.m. the probability of a serious crash is 68 percent in this block,” said THP Colonel Tracy Trott.. “And that’s where the captain should direct his resources.”
The goal of the six month-old program is to give officers a heads up to help prevent crashes or to be nearby should one happen. While nothing is 100 percent accurate, C.R.A.S.H. has been right 72 percent of the time since its inception.
“You have some days when the predictions are right on, and other days when they’re way off,” said Beth Rowan, a THP statistical analyst working on the program. “Mainly what you want to look for is whether the performance of the model is acceptable. And collectively, it’s been very good.”
Traffic fatalities have dropped around 5.5 percent from this time last year, leading officials to view C.R.A.S.H. as being effective, according to Trott.
The software has the capability to factor in any data point while also dismissing points that may not be pertinent. THP has also implemented a model to focus on drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs, using informatoin like the locations of vendors who sell alcohol.
“The model itself goes through and identifies, if you will, what the most important characteristics are,” Rowan said. “You put everything in that you can, and the model tells you what is important and what’s not.”
The entire program cost THP $243,000, with funding provided through federal grants from the Governors Highway Safety Office. While Tennessee is not the only state beginning to implement predictive analytic software, only a handful of states are using it for traffic patterns, according to IBM’s public safety specialist Mike Reade.
“Oftentimes veteran law enforcement officers will be making those predictions themselves when they’re in the field,” Reade said. “What we do is put a lot of data and fact behind it. The volume of factual data we’re using can’t be done by a human. You need an analytical tool like this to sift through the volumes of data — years of traffic data — to come up with this type of foresight.”
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How Can an Old Smartphone Be Used to Make a City Better?
Have you ever been annoyed by the amount of people fighting for position on a city sidewalk only to turn the corner and find the next block over all but deserted? Ever thought that your old smartphone could be used in some other capacity? These may seem like totally separate problems, but Alex Winter has one unique solution to solve both.
His new startup, Placemeter, has found a unique yet incredibly simple way to monitor street activity and turn it into data that cities and businesses can use — all the while putting discarded smartphones to use.
Here’s what happens: City dwellers send Placemeter information about where they live and what their view consists of. The company sends back a window mounting smartphone kit, which will allow them to use its camera to monitor street activity. The movement is then quantified using a computer program that identifies individual bodies and tracks their actions, as shown in this video. Even better? In exchange, folks providing a view get up to $50 per month for an asset that previously paid nothing, according to City Lab.
As great as Placemeter is for those with a good street view, it is even better for an urban area as a whole. That’s because the images captured through the smartphones, over time, yields valuable data for city officials. Foot and vehicle traffic patterns, as well as the use of benches and other public amenities, can all be tracked through Placemeter and used to improve everyday life.
“Measuring data about how the city moves in real time, being able to make predictions on that, is definitely a good way to help cities work better,” Winter told City Lab.
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The data is also very valuable to retailers, helping them assess what might be the best spot for a new store. Such data has been long sought after, but until now, there had not been a simple, widespread way to collect it.
For many, with this advancement comes the concern of privacy — both for those being observed on the street and those with a smartphone. Placemeter has emphasized its commitment to privacy, though, and says the device’s camera doesn’t monitor anything inside a host’s home. Additionally, a computer, not a human, analyzes all the images of the street, and once the useful data is captured, the footage is erased.
Although it’s only in New York for now, the company wants to expand to other U.S. cities.
Thanks to Placemeter, says Winter, “cities and citizens [can] collaborate to make the city better.”And who wouldn’t want that?
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With Parking Spaces Sitting Vacant, Atlanta Has a Bold Plan to Merge Communities With Transit
Everyone who lives near a city knows all too well how much location – specifically, proximity to the commuter rail — matters. The shorter the drive is to the station, the better. And the ability to walk there trumps just about everything.
Such convenience is about to come to thousands in Atlanta. That city’s metro system MARTA has started making real estate deals to build housing to unused transit parking lots. MARTA plans to turn the space at the King Memorial, Edgewood, and Edgewood/Chandler Park stations into combination residential and retail developments.
“People have been looking at these parking lots for decades wondering why they were just sitting there,” Amanda Rhein, senior director of transit-oriented development at MARTA, told City Lab.
Now, that is finally changing — and it’s not only helping commuters, but also the railroad itself. Without state funding, MARTA’s bottom line is very easily impacted by the ups and downs of the economy. So, when Keith Parker took over the agency in 2012, he decided that a bold project like this is what was required to keep it competitive. The development will not only produce revenue from all the train riders, but also with each unit sold, will raise money for the transit system that it can use for improvements.
And so far, Parker’s decision is looking like a good one. MARTA has successfully leased land to developers for mixed-use buildings that are focused on the adjacent transit opportunities, including a project on a four-acre unused parking lot that features 13,000 square feet of retails space and 386 housing units.
The boon does not only belong to the railroads, though; it is the entire community’s as these projects could decrease traffic on the roads. And on top of that, there is more to the new spaces then one might think. Beyond all the great new housing and shops, each development will also feature a public park as well as have at least 20 percent of the units dedicated to affordable housing.
While construction has yet to start, there’s already hope for more in the future since this model is good for both the city of Atlanta, its citizens and the transit system itself.
“We’re going to make the stations themselves and the surrounding areas more pleasant and more easily accessible, and we’ll be providing amenities to our riders and to the surrounding community. So I think people will realize that and give MARTA a chance,” says Rhein.
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What the Demise of Car Ownership Means for the Planet
It’s an undeniable fact that Americans love the automobile. Like riding a bike or learning how to shave, getting our first car is a rite of passage. But a new poll from automobile consultancy firm, AlixPartners, found that this love affair may be cooling.
As Fast Company reports, the success of car-sharing programs such as ZipCar and Cars2go is actually causing a dip in automobile sales. In fact, a poll surveyed 10 major cities where car sharing has taken off and found that there are 500,000 fewer cars on the roads. And by 2020, that number is expected to increase substantially, with an estimated 4 million people sharing cars, resulting in 1.2 million fewer vehicles on the road.
It sounds like this trend won’t be reversing either: AlixPartners found that the 51 percent of people who have shared a car avoid buying or leasing a car, and that 45 percent never plan on having owning a car at all.
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Why is car-ownership is getting the cold shoulder? Surprisingly (and unfortunately), it’s not because the country is becoming more environmentally aware. Rather, it looks like young people and families with children are feeling the price pinch of cars and as a result, think they can simply do without one. As Fast Company points out, “Cost and convenience rated highest as reasons for sharing over owning (56 percent of people chose either of those). Only 23 percent cited the environment as a primary factor.”
But regardless of intention, car pollution is terrible for the environment. The EPA estimates that more than half of air pollution in this country is caused by automobiles. And while cars are getting greener (hybrids, electric cars, smart cars), they aren’t entirely accessible or affordable for everyone yet, so why not just share the cars we already have?
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Besides, more and more Americans are shifting towards public transportation anyway. A recent study found that we took about 10.7 billion rides on mass transit in 2013 alone, the highest number in 57 years. Let’s also not forget that more and more people are moving to cities, where public transportation is more available. Even car-loving cities like Los Angeles are improving their public transportation.
While there’s no denying our car-obsessed roots, it appears as if America is moving away from four wheels, greening up the planet in the process.
How an Innovative Parking Program May Cut Downtown Traffic by One Third
In most towns and cities, parking meters are considered the third rail of urban politics. Just the mention of meters and rate increases spawned recent protests in Chicago, Buenos Aires and Cape Verde, an island off the coast of Africa. Others have gone further: When Coogee, a resort town outside of Sydney, Australia, proposed installing meters, protesters tried to earn a spot in the Guinness World Records book by making the largest human-formed “NO” ever recorded. And when the town of Lewes, in East Sussex, England, installed meters in 2004, someone in the area responded by blowing up 14 meters, causing more than £20,000 worth of damage. As Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the leading thinkers on parking, puts it: “I think people use the reptilian cortex of the brain to think about parking. It’s the most primitive part of the brain, for making fight or flight decisions, and it deals with territorial decisions. Parking is a territorial issue.”
No one likes to pay for parking — even Shoup. But when cities don’t charge a reasonable rate at meters, we end up with more traffic on the road and fewer people shopping at neighborhood businesses.
Here’s why: Most towns and cities, when they install meters, charge the same amount for every neighborhood, no matter the time of day. That might seem fair at first glance, but it goes against the basic principle of supply and demand. While the supply always stays the same, different neighborhoods draw different numbers of people, and that demand changes by the time of day, day of week and by the month and season.
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And getting prices wrong causes major problems. If, for example, a city starts charging a high meter rate in a small shopping district that receives only a modest amount of traffic, many people will refuse to pay and just drive right past. As Shoup points out, that has major detrimental effects: “Businesses will lose customers, and drivers will not take advantage of spaces that are available.” Los Angeles recently experienced this exact problem. “When they doubled the price of parking in the city,” Shoup says, “you could see entire blocks that were empty.”
If, on the other hand, you charge a below-market rate for a popular district, you have the opposite problem — people will stay parked in the spots all day. Phil Lesser, a business owner in San Francisco’s popular Mission District and the vice president of government/media relations for the Mission Merchants Association, says his fellow business owners fear that exact problem: “Street parking has always been a key component of commercial corridors. If [customers] come down and can’t find a spot and leave, that doesn’t help the merchants.”
Beyond that, the cheap on-street prices means that drivers will just keep circling the block until a space becomes free, which not only contributes to pollution but also creates traffic problems: Studies have shown that as much as 30 percent of all traffic in downtown areas is caused by drivers hunting for parking spaces. That traffic is further exacerbated in the evenings, because parking is often free after 6 p.m. What happens when parking is free? Drivers start hunting for spaces at 5:30 and 5:45 p.m., circling the block in the middle of rush hour — making things particularly hellish for traffic-mired cities. Shoup and his students did a parking study in one small neighborhood in Los Angeles that found that the highest levels of space-hunting happened between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. “The city’s parking policy was congesting traffic at the very time people wanted to drive home,” he says. “The city is telling you to idle in traffic at the very time people want to go home.”
The solution, argues Shoup, is a pretty simple one: Make prices for on-street parking dynamic, or more like the prices for hotels or flights. An area that sees a ton of interest — a popular shopping district during the afternoon, for example — would have higher meter rates than a quieter neighborhood. A few blocks away, on a quieter street, the rates would be cheaper, enticing people to the area. Those prices would fluctuate, depending on the time of day and the season of the year to ensure that a few parking spaces are always available.
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In 2011, San Francisco implemented a dynamic-pricing pilot program in a few neighborhoods with the help of a $19.8 million federal grant. The program, which the city dubbed “SFpark,” installed smart meters that would change pricing for morning, afternoons and evenings, with the goal of trying to reach a target of having streets around 85 percent full. Today, if you want to park down by the popular Ferry Building on Saturday afternoon, you can expect to pony up $4.50 per hour. Willing to walk a few blocks? You might only pay $1.00 per hour.
Lesser of the Mission Merchants Association says that the business owners were initially “wary” of the plan, as were many people — San Francisco residents feared that the new rate system was an attempt to jack up rates and boost parking revenue. That hasn’t come to pass. Rates, which used to average $2.73 per hour across the city, now average only $2.41 — a drop of 12 percent. Depending on the neighborhood and time of day, the rate varies from $0.25 per hour to $6.00 per hour. Every few weeks, the parking authority tweaks the rates to try to hit their targeted ratio. “After 13 rate changes, we’ve seen zero complaints,” says Jay Primus, manager of the program. “In a town like San Francisco, people would let us know [if they had complaints].”
Revenue from the parking meters is up slightly, but the new system — which makes it finally easy to find and pay for a space — has drastically cut down on parking tickets. “We dramatically reduced the number of parking tickets, which is great for our customers,” Primus says. “Anecdotally, what we’ve heard is that people are much happier because, finally, parking is easier to find and easier to pay for.” The shop owners, too, have welcomed the program. “Anything that will help people find parking and get them out of their cars — we’re all in favor of that,” says Lesser. “We’d like it if all our neighbors could live above us and walk or bike to us, but the automobile is still an integral part to people’s lives.”
Primus and SFpark are currently finalizing a report on the pilot program’s results, which will be released in June. While Primus is unable to reveal the data until then, he does tell me that San Francisco has become a popular stop for delegations from American and international cities struggling to manage their own parking. Los Angeles, Berkeley, Calif., and Seattle have started small pilots with the help of local and federal grants, while Rio de Janeiro — which is currently trying to clean up its infrastructure for the 2016 Olympic Games — sent representatives who were enthused by SFpark. “They made the pitch to the mayor [of Rio], and the mayor just loved it,” says Shoup, who also met with the Rio representatives. “They recommended 7,000 meters, and the mayor said no — 20,000. They just put out a request-for-proposal. A parking system would be a legacy of the Games.”
In the end, instituting a supply-and-demand system for parking might be the easiest and cheapest way to reduce traffic. “Every big city has parking,” Primus says, “and almost every city has parking management infrastructure — and changing how a city manages that system is a very powerful way to achieve their goals. It’s easy in a sense that it’s more policy- and technology-based, and not infrastructure. It’s cheaper than building a subway network.”
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How All These Snowstorms Could Make for Better Roads and Cities
Public planners studying street traffic patterns have long known that the wider the street, the more likely drivers are to speed and drive recklessly. This winter, many of them are tweeting photos of the patterns cars have left in the snow, revealing spaces where sidewalks could be widened, making it easier for pedestrians to cross the street and enhancing driver safety. The patterns are called “sneckdowns”—a combination of the words “snowy” and “neckdowns,” curb extensions that can calm traffic.
The piles of snow are keeping drivers from attempting aggressive passing maneuvers, just as wider sidewalks would if they were built. Planners in favor of these curb extensions point to the photos to show that drivers aren’t using these swaths of street anyway, so why not widen the sidewalk there? In other words, these annoying snowstorms are creating a free way to study traffic patterns to guide future street planning.
Philadelphia has already implemented this idea, widening sidewalks based on snow patterns in 2011. Prema Gupta, the director of planning for Philly’s University City District, told Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog USA that snow pattern photos “quickly made the case that there’s right-sizing to do here. For us it was just a really compelling way of showing there was way too much street and not nearly enough place for people.” So these relentless snowstorms that have made much of the country difficult to traverse this winter just might help everyone’s commute become easier in the future.
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