4 ms·
You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bik
by jdblair 10y ago
You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bike pass-through would be just as effective at stopping through traffic in a neighborhood. The point is to block routes through a neighborhood and force car traffic back to the main roads, stopping through traffic in a residential neighborhood.
- thenipper 10y agoIt'd probably make plowing a lot worse though as the plows had to cut in and out.
- Jtsummers 10y agoDepending on the road layout, the plows could just be making Us through the side streets from the main avenues. Leave main, go to mandatory right/left turn, go to mandatory right/left turn, return to main. The problem with this is that east coast cities are typically not laid out on nice grids like most cities west of the Mississippi.
- thenipper 10y agoTrue but those non-grid layouts can also help with traffic issues as they're sub-optimal to cut through. I live in the Boston area, i'm pretty well versed with crappy layed out streets
- _delirium 10y agoFwiw many newer residential developments (from roughly the 1990s) are built like this in the first place, which is why there are so many back-to-back cul-de-sacs, and rarely through streets that go more than a few blocks. It's mainly older neighborhoods that have the traffic cut-through problem, because they were built before developers started laying out neighborhood streets with the explicit goal of preventing through traffic.
- oftenwrong 10y agoThe Berkeley solution has the advantage that it doesn't hurt the utility of walking and cycling.
- oh_sigh 10y agoBut it does negatively affect some home prices while positively affecting other home prices.
- enoch_r 10y agoIt's much more difficult to change streets into cul de sacs after the fact, but I can't imagine that forcing through-traffic to take certain streets doesn't reduce the value of homes on those streets, regardless of the method you use to do so.
- plorkyeran 10y agoCul-de-sacs could easily be built with connecting bike/pedestrian pathways if that was something the developers actually cared about.
- _delirium 10y agoThat's pretty common. I lived in a suburban neighborhood in Houston for years and the back-to-back cul-de-sacs always had sidewalks connecting them, so it was only with a car you'd have to go around the long way. As a result it was actually a lot nicer to travel through subdivisions if you were going somewhere by bike/foot, rather than going on the busy main roads.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoYes. For an extreme example, see Houton, NL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Houten,+Netherlands/@52.0309639,5.1562873,17.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x47c666e7c006f4bb:0x87d8ebe7bead1a3d!8m2!3d52.0278426!4d5.1630019 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Houten,+Netherlands/@52.03...