RETROFITTING STREETS:

MORE THAN CROSSWALKS

Since so many of our streets are being designed exclusively to accommodate increasing traffic, it will indeed take more than a crosswalk and walk signal to make them safe and inviting for pedestrians. Local officials will have to revisit land use and housing policies that encourage sprawl, which make walking both inconvenient and dangerous. But there are also many things that transportation engineers and local officials can do to retrofit city streets.

Modifications include the addition of clearly marked crosswalks with zebra striping; provision of wide sidewalks on both sides of the street; pedestrian-activated crossing signals; intersection modifications including the re-timing of traffic signals; the addition of medians or pedestrian refuge islands in the middle of wide streets; and traffic calming measures that reduce the speed of motorists and give more space and priority to pedestrians.

Traffic calming is one of the techniques that has been proven effective and which is advocated by many researchers studying pedestrian injuries and deaths. Though traffic calming has been widely implemented in Europe, it has not been in the U.S., where some see this as conflicting with the need to maintain or improve levels of service for roadways. Traffic calming includes a variety of changes that slow or divert vehicle traffic, separate pedestrian pathways from vehicle traffic, and make the road corridor more pleasant.

Common traffic calming measures include physical design measures that draw attention to the presence of pedestrians, such as raised intersections and crosswalks, and "bulb-outs" that extend the corners of the sidewalk into the street so as to shorten the crossing distance and make pedestrians more visible. Other measures include road narrowing, and the creation of zigzag routes and curves. Traffic circles and roundabouts are also used to slow traffic.

Area-wide traffic calming in neighborhoods in the Netherlands has reduced traffic accidents by 20-70 percent. Traffic calming in German neighborhoods has reduced traffic injuries by 20-70 percent and serious traffic injuries by 35-56 percent. A comprehensive review of traffic calming impacts in Denmark, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands found that traffic injuries fell by an average of 53 percent in traffic-calmed neighborhoods.