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> In my town, a six-lane arterial connects neighborhoods with a major N-S arterial, downtown, and past downtown is a US highway. The town has taken that six lan

> In my town, a six-lane arterial connects neighborhoods with a major N-S arterial, downtown, and past downtown is a US highway. The town has taken that six lane road and turned it into a two lane road with center turn lane, bicycle lanes, and parking. What should be a 40+ mph speed limit is now a 25 mph speed limit. This is a description of a heavily car-oriented urban plan. Ideally no urban street should have 40+ mph driving; it’s grossly unsafe for pedestrians/cyclists. Save those speeds for the highway. In my opinion cities should not have 6 lane streets. Such wide bands of pavement break up the neighborhood and are very unfriendly to everything but cars. Unfortunately, once you have built your city on such a plan with a 100 foot gap between buildings, figuring out what better to do with the space gets tricky.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Ideally no urban street should have 40+ mph driving; it’s grossly unsafe. Save those speeds for the highway. A six lane, 40+ mph urban arterial street is a (significant) highway, though it may not be a controlled-access freeway (in practice, they have more controlled access than less significant urban streets, though often less than freeways, which also have higher speed limits; it's a continuum.)
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Yes, and we shouldn’t put at-grade highways through the middle of city neighborhoods with housing/small businesses/etc. along the sides, no grade-separated pedestrian crossings, etc. I grew up in Southern CA, and the way cities there are crisscrossed by super-wide 6-lane roads (and every destination is surrounded by parking lots) is very disruptive to anything but a car-dominated lifestyle/culture. In many cities people almost exclusively travel by car, even though the weather is pleasant throughout the year. As a consequence lives are heavily scheduled and people spend little time talking to their neighbors. I also spent significant time growing up in a colonial city in southern Mexico, designed around narrow streets with little available parking. The cultural difference was stark: in the Mexican city people walked everywhere and it was impossible to go anywhere without running into multiple friends in the street.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Yes, and we shouldn’t put at-grade highways through the middle of city neighborhoods We generally don't. Arterial roads—what was being discussed—are typically between neighborhoods forming a widely-spaced network, from which a dense network of smaller roads branch off which are the roads “through the middle of city neighborhoods”. That's what the word “arterial” means.
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dragonwriter 8y ago

> Ideally no urban street should have 40+ mph driving; it’s grossly unsafe. Save those speeds for the highway. A six lane, 40+ mph urban arterial street is a (significant) highway, though it may not be a controlled-access freeway (in practice, they have more controlled access than less significant urban streets, though often less than freeways, which also have higher speed limits; it's a continuum.)

jacobolus 8y ago
Yes, and we shouldn’t put at-grade highways through the middle of city neighborhoods with housing/small businesses/etc. along the sides, no grade-separated pedestrian crossings, etc. I grew up in Southern CA, and the way cities there are crisscrossed by super-wide 6-lane roads (and every destination is surrounded by parking lots) is very disruptive to anything but a car-dominated lifestyle/culture. In many cities people almost exclusively travel by car, even though the weather is pleasant throughout the year. As a consequence lives are heavily scheduled and people spend little time talking to their neighbors. I also spent significant time growing up in a colonial city in southern Mexico, designed around narrow streets with little available parking. The cultural difference was stark: in the Mexican city people walked everywhere and it was impossible to go anywhere without running into multiple friends in the street.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Yes, and we shouldn’t put at-grade highways through the middle of city neighborhoods We generally don't. Arterial roads—what was being discussed—are typically between neighborhoods forming a widely-spaced network, from which a dense network of smaller roads branch off which are the roads “through the middle of city neighborhoods”. That's what the word “arterial” means.

deleted 8y ago

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