Comments on Reinventing Urban Transport: Can "shared space" street design reassure vulnerab...

Sharing is a learned skill. Providing a space for ...

2010-10-27T17:00:54.207+08:00

Sharing is a learned skill. Providing a space for sharing, doesn't mean everyone immediately knows how to share well. The language of the street and culture of street users must emphasize education of proper sharing techniques. The implicit contract should be: "by using this shared space, I agree to follow it's customs, or be ejected from it." One of the great things about shared space, is the customs for use can dynamically change to meet the needs of the users. Rush hour now, soccer field later, bike disco tonight!

That said, here in Los Angeles, I'll take 'uncertainty of safety' over 'definitely unsafe', any day. Dedicated spaces are great, but they are never really exclusive, cars can hit pedestrians on sidewalks in driveways, bicyclists like to ride on sidewalks too, pedestrians like to walk in streets and bike lanes to get to their cars. We all just need to wise up and learn to respect our fellow street persons, then sharing will be easy.

I can think of a place in the US that uses this &q...

2010-10-26T05:30:14.952+08:00

I can think of a place in the US that uses this "shared space", and as far as I recall there was never a particular feeling of vulnerability.

At the University of Connecticut, there were several buildings where the staff parking lot was only accessible by driving on the sidewalk. As in, it was several hundred feet from the nearest road.
Everybody seemed to know that:
A) You were supposed to drive on the sidewalk to get there, that the sidewalk had been specifically made wide so cars could drive on it (although not wide enough to pass), and that any sidewalk on campus meant to exclude cars had a couple of huge boulders blocking it so only a bicyclist could fit through.
B) You were a guest on that sidewalk, and if you hit a pedestrian you were in BIG trouble. You drove at about 5mph, and while most pedestrians would yield to you, that was entirely them being nice.

I checked out google maps to provide a satellite photo of a parking lot that couldn't be reached by road, but in the decades since I left they've built roads to all of them. :( But in the 20 years I lived in that tiown, I never heard of a single incident of a car hitting a pedestrian on campus, except for one busy street at the edge of campus with on-street parking where jaywalkers would try to cross from between parked cars, often without looking and/or while drunk. And none of them ever required hospitalization, but most folks felt that was only a matter of time.

So, what I am saying is that the solution to this may be as simple as making it clear, by pavement and signs and other methods, that the area is a SIDEWALK, however it is one that does not absolutely ban cars.
It is sort of a self-fixing (and self-creating) problem: if the area is full of cyclists and pedestrians, motorists will be used to having to proceed with caution, but if motorists can usually zip in there without interference, they may become complacent and stop paying as much attention, and/or driving faster.

While I appreciate shared space from both a theore...

2010-10-26T02:11:03.676+08:00

While I appreciate shared space from both a theoretical perspective and the implementations I have experienced, I believe that it is fundamentally at odds with NYC culture. Think of all of your daily experiences in the city, both transportation-related and otherwise. There absolutely must be, in every case, whether it's getting on and off the train, queuing up to order food at a deli, or hanging out in the park, a "don't talk" option. One party must absolutely have the option of completely ignoring the other party. It's simply ingrained in our culture. Should the couple sitting on a blanket eating sandwiches keep their heads up and/or move closer to the periphery of the park, or should the people throwing the baseball around find a more appropriate, space-rich park in which to do so? All New Yorkers have an idea of which party has the "right-of-way" in any given scenario (whether these perceptions match up is a different question). The answer to these questions is never "just be human, be respectful. Figure it out amongst yourselves." Somebody must always have the right-of-way.

This aspect of our culture is a beautiful coping mechanism for living in close quarters with so many people, but the one aspect of city life that it doesn't translate well to is maneuvering heavy machinary through our streets at high speeds. How many times have you been about to cross at an intersection where there is a motorist waiting to your right or left, and the traffic light is in a transitional phase? Do you and the motorist look at each other in the eye and try to figure it out like human beings? Hell no! You both look to the traffic signal to tell you what to do! Shared space is the antithesis of what makes NYC work--again, with respect to transportation, and other aspects of city life.

I think shared space schemes have a future in American small towns, and maybe even small- to mid-sized cities, but here, I think it's a long, long way off. So let's keep championing those protected cycle tracks while we still have Bloomberg and JSK at our sides!

I live in Germany. The street I live in has recent...

2010-10-26T01:43:08.058+08:00

I live in Germany. The street I live in has recently been turned into a "shared space" place. It's actually quite appalling. No-one has any idea what to do. It's only about 30 metres and on the boundary of a pedestrian area, so a lot of pedestrians think they're in a mall and can safely walk out into the middle of the road, and then so many people just end up confused and quite probably scared. I hardly think that is the intention of "shared space", scared pedestrians.

A lot of the cars that drive down the street are coming out of a carpark. The street is one-way; they follow the signs to a carpark, and when they leave they have to turn right and go through the unfamiliar shared zone. They're often confused and drive cautiously. Mission accomplished.

Then there's the regulars. Most of them treat it not much differently than they treat the clearly separated road before it. They drive just as fast and in the inimitable style of German drivers leave almost no margin for error. Again, I hardly think this counts as achieving the desired result.

The net result is that pedestrians have to keep out of the way of cars, except that they don't have the confidence of knowing that this particular area is out of the way of cars.

When visiting relatives in Holland, they complained about exactly the same things. It makes pedestrians feel unsafe, it's confusing. How can that be a good thing?

When I heard about the idea, I thought it sounded pretty good. Now I have experienced it, I don't think it has any value at all. There's plenty of better approaches to traffic calming.

The problem with shared space is that there are to...

2010-10-25T11:35:40.564+08:00

The problem with shared space is that there are too many impatient assholes in pickup trucks that think the biggest vehicle deserves to go first.

Also, I dont understand why it's always "see what europe is doing." Want to see widepread implementation of shared space? Look at India, and then get back to me with their mortality rates.

The shared space concept seems to me to be using f...

2010-10-25T10:18:06.418+08:00

The shared space concept seems to me to be using fear of hitting people as a mechanism for traffic calming. I would rather use trees or other obstacles to calm traffic, rather than a kid in the road.

Subjective safety matters for bike usage. If you l...

2010-10-25T05:30:14.575+08:00

Subjective safety matters for bike usage. If you look at the reasons so many parents drive there kids to school in the US instead of having them walk or ride there bikes to school, its subjective safety - parents just don't think its safe for their kids to walk or ride there bikes to school, so they drive there kids to and from school.

In the Netherlands kids walk and ride bikes to school because parents still think its safe to do so. Even at distances that in the US we would provide a school bus, in the Netherlands parents expect kids to ride there bikes.

The rates of injury in this country caused by riding bikes to school in this country is pretty minimal. Obesity and increased rates of diabetes are much bigger public health threats from not riding than risk of injury from riding a bike to school. But because people do such a bad job of evaluating the actual risks involved, you need to add subjective safety measures like protected bike lanes to get people to actually feel comfortable riding a bike.

Cyclists aren’t at risk; blind people are. Worryin...

2010-10-25T03:19:35.081+08:00

Cyclists aren’t at risk; blind people are. Worrying about precious bicyclists distracts from the real danger, which is killing off a few blind people just so urban planners can seem European, modern, and anti-car.