6 ms·

First time I've heard of "rat running", but am having a hard time seeing the justification for the negative connotation. I can only see it as a more efficient u

• PeachPlum 9y ago
  Rat running is from narrow UK streets, largely residential, being used as through roads rather than access to homes. The use of traffic aware GPS also encourages more traffic down these roads. You might think it as efficient but it changes the levels of safety for pedestrians which are usually parents & children at the time of day this is more prevalent.
  • tfnw 9y ago
    I don't think it is necessarily a worse overall outcome, even if the small streets become somewhat less safe. It could be that installing barriers at some of the more dangerous points is the most optimal solution?
    • dmoy 9y ago
      Blocking off certain streets is exactly what my hometown did. Make it so only certain roads go straight through, others have every third intersection blocked off
      • tfnw 9y ago
        I didn't mean barriers that prevent through traffic, I meant barriers that protect pedestrians.
        • macNchz 9y ago
          I think that it's a reasonable and valid decision for a community to try to restrict through traffic to the main roads such that residential areas can remain quiet/free from exhaust/safe to walk around without all sorts of guardrails and stuff, even if it means less efficiency and more congestion on the main routes.
          • deleted 9y ago
            [deleted]
        • tfnw 9y ago
          @macNchz Why is it okay to push even more of these costs on people around the main route, don't you think that people in all areas should take on their share of these costs. Also struggling to see how a guardrail could be burdensome.
          • michaelt 9y ago
            Road networks often follow a hierarchical design - Freeways fed by major roads, major roads fed by smaller roads, smaller roads fed by residential streets. The larger roads, obviously, are designed for higher traffic speeds and volumes. Features you might see (depending on how large the road is) include more and wider lanes, restrictions on stopping, fewer curves, better visibility, fewer junctions, pedestrians directed to footbridges or dedicated crossings, better lighting, no buildings opening directly onto the roads, and suchlike. For example, see [1] blue roads being slower/lower capacity, and orange and red being larger, higher speed roads. Also struggling to see how a guardrail could be burdensome. Consider this narrow road in London [2] which allows you to bypass the traffic lights between Clerkenwell Road and St John St (admittedly at the cost of taking a sharp corner - I've done this on a motorbike). Replacing the bollards with armco barriers would prevent pedestrians from crossing the road. (IMHO if people don't want a road used as a through road, they should get the road blocked at one end - rather than expecting a legislative solution - and if they don't want the inconvenience of going around, perhaps they should consider that other road users don't either) [1] http://www.stgeorgenp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Proposed-Speed-Limits-for-East-Area-120115.pdf http://www.stgeorgenp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Prop... [2] https://goo.gl/ETDx3h https://goo.gl/ETDx3h
      • CamperBob2 9y ago
        Sounds good, as long as I get to withhold my taxes in proportion to the number of streets that get blocked off by people who feel they're more entitled to use them than I am.
        • awjr 9y ago
          Transport planning is about developing road networks around specific purposes. So a major route would have a higher speed profile than a residential road. Residential roads with lower speed profiles also sometimes expect children to be playing in them and primarily be destinations. Filtered streets (placing bollards at one end) are a key tool in rebalancing anti-social behaviour primarily caused by congestion on major routes. It is not changing the function of the road, but enforcing the original designed purpose of the road to be an end destination and not a convenient through route. It is also significant tax saving. Residential roads are not designed for significant volumes of traffic and can suffer significant damage if they become overused.
    • Silhouette 9y ago
      I don't think it is necessarily a worse overall outcome, even if the small streets become somewhat less safe. That's probably because you've never lived on a street designed as a local residential area that has been turned into a rat run. Unfortunately, anyone who has would be in no doubt about that being an overall worse outcome. It undermines the structure of most official traffic planning, sometimes with horrifying results for safety, along with a variety of other undesirable side effects. Ultimately, all roads are not equal. They are often designed for different purposes, and when they are repurposed for things they were not intended for, very bad things can and do happen. This is a real problem with modern SatNav systems directing large numbers of vehicles along unsuitable routes because they're trying to shave 10s off a journey time, and I imagine laws will be passed regulating such systems before too long (this being easier and more practical than designating all the roads in question as access only and then actually enforcing that law).
• Ntrails 9y ago
  The idea is that if a main road has consistently high traffic, some road users will take narrower, less well appointed roads (through villages for example) at unreasonable speeds. This leads to traffic calming measures as a way to counteract over-use of what should be largely residential traffic. This is also why "Bypasses" became very common - to get high volumes of commuting traffic away from residential areas where possible
  • tfnw 9y ago
    But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is driving within the speed limit? Again, just because the history of a street made it appropriate for relaxed pedestrian use, should that now be in perpetuity? Maybe a better solution would be to put in barriers.
    • Harvey-Specter 9y ago
      > But why should it be for residential traffic, if the through traffic is driving within the speed limit? The problem is that through traffic often drives above the speed limit.
      • tfnw 9y ago
        So, I guess you think that this new driver tracking would be cheaper than traditional obstructions (i.e. speed humps, chicanes, etc...)? I guess it could be, but what are the non obvious secondary and tertiary order costs of tracking all car movement? This seems worrying to me.
      • pc86 9y ago
        A) 99% of traffic on every road drives above the speed limit. B) If speed is the issue, that's fine - address the speed. Increased traffic is not the issue in this case.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        Then the problem is “enforcing speed limits”.
• dazc 9y ago
  It is more a problem of large volumes of traffic using roads that were never designed for this purpose. In the UK, it is fairly common for people to have to park on the street rather than have their own driveways. Some local authorities also require each household to have 2 or 3 refuse bins and, because homes were not designed to accommodate them, these are also often placed at the roadside. All of this is just about manageable most of the time but imagine the chaos when you get 100's of cars using your street as a short cut twice a day? Also, your typical 'rat-runner' tends to be a bad tempered person with a tendency to drive over the speed limit (typically 30 mph in the UK, which is quite fast enough for a residential street). Needless to say, if you are unlucky enough to have to live on a rat-run you can expect your car to be damaged two or three times a year. And, of course, the guilty party always drives off without reporting it. Oh, and if you have kids - you can just imagine! Furthermore, the supposed efficiency saving is, at best, negligible since a busy rat-run becomes congested much more readily than the major road everyone is avoiding.
  • tfnw 9y ago
    I would be interested to see how the use of lots of small street routes around a main route affects the flow of the main route, and what the efficiency gain generally is. Maybe it is also in your best interests if the street is modified to accommodate modern use cases.
    • 1_2__4 9y ago
      You're under the impression the government does that sort of thing in the us (modify roads to address demand). In my experience that is largely an artifact of history now.
    • pjc50 9y ago
      You can't widen a residential street without eminent-domaining everyone's front garden and/or maybe demolishing some of the houses.
      • justin66 9y ago
        Tree lawns are quite often property of the municipality. If they're big enough, they can be sacrificed without the residents having much recourse.
• enoch_r 9y ago
  Imagine people start driving through a park. Pedestrians and bicyclists complain. Drivers respond: This is just a more efficient use of space. If you prevent cars from driving into the park, they'll just cause more traffic along the arterials--that's not fair. Streets are not fungible "vehicular transportation widgets." They serve many purposes. In many places, relatively quiet neighborhood streets serve as unofficial (but sometimes official) transportation infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as spaces for community. They can only serve this purpose if they are low-traffic. Taking your kids on errands on a cargo bike, or letting them walk to school or to a neighbor's house, or letting them play basketball on the street, or teaching them how to ride a bike--all possible on a low-traffic neighborhood street, all very ill-advised on a high-traffic one. Higher traffic on these streets expands the space available for motor vehicles, but it literally destroys transportation infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians. As someone who lives on a major arterial but commutes (by bike, with kids) on quiet neighborhood streets, I strongly support the diversion of traffic to the former.
• stordoff 9y ago
  The problem comes as you get streets such as this just off major roads being used as cut-throughs: http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DXHF2G/terraced-street-in-hillsborough-area-of-sheffield-south-yorkshire-DXHF2G.jpg http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DXHF2G/terraced-street-in-hillsboro... Those roads can barely handle the traffic they get because they are so narrow, so people using them at speed to avoid more suitable roads is a problem. It's: * less safe for residents (inherent to more traffic, but especially so given how close the entryways are to the road), and, for better or worse, there may be children playing in the street * makes it more dangerous to park there (risk of damage from passing vehicles) * less convenient to park if you have to negotiate heavy traffic * adds unwanted noise - typical residential traffic volumes/patterns aren't too bad, but I wouldn't want heavy traffic passing by just outside my front room. Its negative connotation is well-earned IMO (especially as _anecdotally_ many of the drivers looking to take advantage of such routes drive at excessive speeds for the road conditions). In a lot of cases, the volume of traffic on those roads SHOULDN'T increase - they just aren't designed for it. I'd also question if it is actually more efficient - with how narrow these sorts of streets are, and the likelihood of people wanting to park etc., you aren't going to get a smooth flow of traffic as people try to negotiate round each other. > It seems to me that these residents associations are trying to push the problem of higher overall road use on to others that don't have such strong residents associations. It's mostly a term used where there is a larger road in the vicinity, but people use the residential streets to avoid congestion or take a marginally shorter route. It's not really a case of shuffling the traffic off onto other residential streets.
• twobyfour 9y ago
  Among other things, it pushes traffic from commercial corridors (where noise is expected) onto residential ones. Then you get people leaning on their horns right outside your window all evening when you're trying to concentrate on work or are exhausted and just want to sleep - because the way the lights are timed on the side streets means that not everyone makes it through the light (or when the traffic on the arteries is heavy, nobody on the side street makes it through the light).