3 ms·

Des Moines' 'road diet' results in surprisingly faster speeds

2 points by elsewhen 4y ago

jfengel 4y ago
If they've reduced lanes, then slightly higher speeds almost certainly don't make up for it. It sounds as if they've moved through traffic elsewhere. There is benefit to drawing a stronger distinction between "streets" (pavement that supports people, such as houses and businesses) and "roads" (pavement that supports cars getting from place to place). Roads are high speed and high volume, and don't have pedestrians. Streets are heavily pedestrianized, and cars move through mostly to get people close enough to walk. Mixing the two has been called a "stroad", and it's usually bad at both jobs: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-... It sounds as if Des Moines has managed to install a street and moved some of the traffic onto roads elsewhere. That's great. It's a bit surprising that the speeds are higher, but it's entirely believable if they've done things improve light timing and installed turn lanes. Speed on a street is still limited, and you don't people treating it as a road. Ideally, people only take streets to stop at a point along it, rather than through. You can design the whole city to make streets unattractive to through traffic. But that takes a lot more design than simply altering the characteristics of one bit of pavement.
- elmerfud 4y ago
  Actually traffic didn't really move elsewhere. This road was never overly congested but it is a main artery between 2nd and Merle Hay. Now that they've done this stupidity you either travel about a mile out of your way to go to another main artery or you just deal with it. When this was a 4 lane road it was not very wide, there was no shoulder only a curb and probably met the bare minimum for acceptable lane width. So people naturally drove the speed limit or a little slower. Now that they've reduced it to a two-lane street with a middle turning lane the lanes are very much wider. Wider lanes make people more comfortable at going fast a middle turn lane someone turning left is no longer blocking a lane of traffic while they wait to turn left. So it absolutely makes sense that people are more comfortable driving a little bit faster and a little bit over the speed limit than they were before. The stupidity of the city planners in Des Moines is just amazing. The idea to remove a major artery that connects one half of the city to the other when the only options are something more than a mile out of your way is stupidity of the highest order. Especially when thinking that this is going to cause people to slow down or take another route. In order for people to take another route that doesn't go past large residential sections you have to first provide the alternate path which doesn't exist.

2 points by elsewhen 4y ago

If they've reduced lanes, then slightly higher speeds almost certainly don't make up for it. It sounds as if they've moved through traffic elsewhere. There is benefit to drawing a stronger distinction between "streets" (pavement that supports people, such as houses and businesses) and "roads" (pavement that supports cars getting from place to place). Roads are high speed and high volume, and don't have pedestrians. Streets are heavily pedestrianized, and cars move through mostly to get people close enough to walk. Mixing the two has been called a "stroad", and it's usually bad at both jobs: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-... It sounds as if Des Moines has managed to install a street and moved some of the traffic onto roads elsewhere. That's great. It's a bit surprising that the speeds are higher, but it's entirely believable if they've done things improve light timing and installed turn lanes. Speed on a street is still limited, and you don't people treating it as a road. Ideally, people only take streets to stop at a point along it, rather than through. You can design the whole city to make streets unattractive to through traffic. But that takes a lot more design than simply altering the characteristics of one bit of pavement.

elmerfud 4y ago
Actually traffic didn't really move elsewhere. This road was never overly congested but it is a main artery between 2nd and Merle Hay. Now that they've done this stupidity you either travel about a mile out of your way to go to another main artery or you just deal with it. When this was a 4 lane road it was not very wide, there was no shoulder only a curb and probably met the bare minimum for acceptable lane width. So people naturally drove the speed limit or a little slower. Now that they've reduced it to a two-lane street with a middle turning lane the lanes are very much wider. Wider lanes make people more comfortable at going fast a middle turn lane someone turning left is no longer blocking a lane of traffic while they wait to turn left. So it absolutely makes sense that people are more comfortable driving a little bit faster and a little bit over the speed limit than they were before. The stupidity of the city planners in Des Moines is just amazing. The idea to remove a major artery that connects one half of the city to the other when the only options are something more than a mile out of your way is stupidity of the highest order. Especially when thinking that this is going to cause people to slow down or take another route. In order for people to take another route that doesn't go past large residential sections you have to first provide the alternate path which doesn't exist.