
Removing street signs, lights and arrows increases safety and road capacity - mhb
http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?aid=1234
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praptak
I have one doubt about this idea. It might be possible that it only works
because such "naked" roads are rare and thus prompt a (temporary) raise in
drivers' alertness.

Even the article provides a hint in this direction:

 _"They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable
increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music
to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have
changed it immediately.”_

It is possible that once people get used to it, they'll feel more secure ->
less alert -> things'll go back to normal.

~~~
ynniv
My perspective is that people are better at what they're doing when they're
paying attention. Give them hints (signs) and shortcuts (straight roads), and
their minds wander to something else, until something exceptional happens.
There are few if any exceptionally good things that can happen in a car (most
revolve around avoiding exceptionally bad things).

In becoming a "native" Boston driver, I have noticed that not all drivers pay
equal attention. In other places I have lived, the attention that other
drivers paid was not as obvious, because roads were straight and everyone was
a "good" (rigid rule obeying) driver most of the time. The roads here are
twisty, bumpy, often full of holes, merge in odd manners, have roundabouts,
unconventional signs, and generally more difficult to drive. Yet I seem to see
fewer road-side accidents on the roads that I drive every day.

Drivers new to the area see narrow lanes (more frequent lane violations),
reduced traffic control (fewer clear opportunities to change lanes or turn),
and faster drivers as chaotic and aggressive. It is also scary for tourists to
cross the street in the midst of this apparent chaos (you'll see natives
walking right through). So you might say that Boston has been in this sort of
traffic chaos for a rather long time, and it has never been significantly more
dangerous in reality (certainly in perception). I can only conclude that
drivers who rely on a rigid rule-set have difficulty in unexpected situations,
but when the exceptional is unexceptional, they will develop a more
sophisticated model.

The net benefit of signs might not be to increase safety, but to allow for
lazier, more distracted drivers. Some signs are generally helpful
(construction / traffic / drawbridge ahead ), but I would like to see a
general reduction. People are smart, and only do what is required. We can tell
them not to talk on the phone or "drive distracted" with little effect. Give
them a couple of (hopefully temporarily) bad experiences while they are not
paying attention, and they will certainly pay more attention all the time.

EDIT: I should also point out that many people refuse to drive in Boston,
making the driving population more self-selective than other cities. I don't
think that this is a problem, but as society becomes more reliant on driving
it becomes one. People who do not drive here can still get around by means of
the subway, cabs, or plain walking (Boston isn't geographically large). I
can't say the same of most other American cities.

~~~
joe_the_user
There are other costs though.

Let's suppose that a thirty minute drive where I'm impelled to pay attention
all the time is safer. It still would take a lot out of me and make me less
productive at work.

It's like the traffic circle where people felt less safe. The fact is you need
to increase both actual safety and the feeling of safety, otherwise people are
less happy and quite rightly aren't going to support the changes.

~~~
Unseelie
Not just make you less productive at work, but these roads are inherently
roads where you drive more carefully (read slower). Driving slower means
longer commutes, and can be correlated to the same economic problem as road
congestion (read slower). Richmond estimates that it has saved 18 million
dollars from the economic cost of congested roads by providing public transit.
There's a lot of money to be lost in the time.

------
chrismealy
I used to think shared space was a great alternative to car-centric streets
but after reading David Hembrow's blog about bicycling in the Netherlands for
a while it's clear that shared space is just a half-measure. If you want a
society where people other than (mostly male) daredevils in their 20s and 30s
can cycle then you need segregated biking facilities. Holland's percent of
trips by bike (modal share) is around 30% (America is about 2%). It got there
by having world-class segregated cycling facilities, not shared space.

David Hembrow on shared space: <http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2008/11/shared-
space.html>

If you have the time check out John Pucher's "Cycling for Everyone: Lessons
for Vancouver from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany":
<http://www.sfu.ca/city/city_pgm_video020.htm>

~~~
Tichy
What definitely does not work is drawing cyclist lanes onto the road. In
Germany at least I think for a while it was believed that cycling lanes should
be drawn on the roads rather than on the sideway.

The result is that the cycling lanes become very dangerous, because car use
them for short term parking all the time (it is not unusual to have a parking
car every 100 meters). That would mean cycling around the car and hitting the
normal road. I think it is safer to just stay on the road all the time, rather
than cycle in and out.

The parking on the cycling lane is actually illegal, but people don't care.
Sometimes I consider just calling the police for every car that parks there,
but I suspect they wouldn't really bother.

~~~
mbateman
I don't see why this is a big deal. Philadelphia has some recently added
cycling lanes that I use all the time. If a car is parked you just look and
cautiously veer around it. Sometimes you have to wait for a few seconds if
there's heavy traffic and the space is narrow. But usually there's even enough
room to get around a car without actually going back into the normal lane,
since our bike lanes are converted from fully sized car lanes, which are
bigger than cars.

And of course people park in them short-term with their hazards on. I'm not
sure whether it's illegal or not (in Philly people park with impunity _long-
term_ in the turn lanes sometimes). But if it is it shouldn't be, there's no
better alternative. Park in the non-bike lane, and make other cars go around
them into the bike lane? No idling at all?

~~~
83457
I believe the big deal is that you are asking "regular folks" to weave in and
out of traffic on a bicycle on the way to work. Not to mention all of the
other hazards with the bike lane, at least in DC area, such as being the
wasteland for crap left over after the plowed snow banks melt. I'm usually
comfortable on even the worst roads but wouldn't want my wife to bike to work
on many of them.

------
senki
Good article, but lacks some pictures.

Drachten:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&q=Drachten&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&q=Drachten&oe=utf-8&ie=UTF8&hl=ja&t=h&sll=53.103684,6.109396&sspn=0.001293,0.003422&split=1&rq=1&ev=zi&radius=0.09&hq=Drachten&hnear=&ll=53.103869,6.109041&spn=0.0013,0.003422&z=19)

Makkinga:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&q=Makkinga&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&q=Makkinga&oe=utf-8&ie=UTF8&hl=ja&hq=&hnear=%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AC,+%E3%82%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%83%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A7%E3%83%AB%E3%83%95,+%E3%83%95%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%82%B9%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88,+%E3%82%AA%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80&ll=52.97232,6.218066&spn=0.001297,0.003422&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.972151,6.21858&panoid=FJjqWFu
--jacMvCpGx7ZqQ&cbp=12,2.83,,0,6.41)

~~~
prewett
Thanks for the pictures. I can definitely see how the traffic circle in
Makkinga is safer than just a through street.

I didn't expect to see a bunch of Japanese labels on the maps of these German
towns, though... :)

------
jplewicke
Alex Tabarrok linked to a video of a British town's experiment with this on a
roundabout:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi0meiActlU&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi0meiActlU&feature=player_embedded)
. They saw a 75% decrease in waiting time at the intersection.

------
TGJ
Now just do something about auto insurance since everyone doesn't worry about
smacking into someone else when they know that their car will be paid for
afterward. That will really raise people's alertness.

------
Groxx
I can see this working for traffic circles / roundabouts, as long as people
know how to use them, _and you have them_. They're far simpler to use than a
regular intersection. They're exceedingly rare in Wisconsin, for example,
especially in any residential area that's more than about 20 years old. The
cost of replacing intersections with them (especially as they're often bigger,
to handle fire trucks, busses, and whatnot) would be _astronomical_. In the
meantime, I'll take stop signs to nothing at _intersections_. There are too
many rude people in the world, and it only takes one to ruin someone else's
life.

------
ck2
So local traffic knows local roads?

Signs and indicators are for people who are not from the area.

~~~
scott_s
It's a long article and I didn't read all of it, but the changes they made
seem more fundamental than that:

 _A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were
striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent
less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many
accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a
local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both
drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand
variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the
measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This
was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he
“would have changed it immediately.”_

That the locals who know the roads _perceived_ the intersection as more
dangerous indicates to me there's something more than "people familiar with
roads don't need signs."

~~~
radu_floricica
So if one would believe in a universal "fair trade" principle, the cost you
pay for security and fluidity is heightened attention from the participants in
traffic. One would wonder how well would this scale: if drivers had to pay the
same attention to every intersection, how long before they would start making
mistakes?

------
jacquesm
People walking on the edge of a 100' drop tend to walk very carefully. The end
result of this sort of reasoning is a steel spike sticking out of the steering
wheel in the place where the airbag sits now.

~~~
emmett
If applying a steel spike sticking out of the steering wheel resulted in a
measurable decrease in deaths from traffic accidents, would you support it?

~~~
jacquesm
That's a really good question. I think I should, but I find the concept
somewhat disconcerting.

There are a fairly large number of single vehicle accidents so I don't think
that it really would lead to a measurable decrease though.

Alternatives: everybody should drive cars with bodies made of hardened but
very thin glass (I'd support that one).

Maximum weight of a personal car 750 Kg.

------
bld
Dupont Circle in Washington DC could take a page from this. It's the exact
opposite principle: inner and outer circles, with sets of inner and outer
traffic and pedestrian lights at each incoming road. At rush hour, it's
fortunate if one vehicle can make it through each light. Other traffic circles
in the area, in my experience, work much better without such control.

------
russell
Morro Bay, CA, is a small town that replaced a freeway offramp/frontage road
4-way stop intersection with a roundabout. Transit time through the
intersection improved because you no-longer had to stop and wait for your
turn. It seems like a good model for low to moderate volume intersections.
Flow is increased and speed is reduced.

~~~
m_eiman
Roundabouts are the New Big Thing here in Sweden, they're building them
everywhere. On average it seems to be an improvement, and I have a local
anecdote where a very busy intersection was rebuilt and improved vastly (while
"everyone" said that it was a bad idea before it was completed).

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culebron
Here's a set of videos on YouTube with Monderman on site in Drachten
explaining what's been done

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo3KWHqmDhA&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo3KWHqmDhA&feature=related)

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wccrawford
It's true that some are just eye-catchers that distract.

But that bridge sign in the article? It's not for when you CAN see the bridge,
it's for all those times in inclement weather when you CAN'T.

~~~
Unseelie
And are speeding down the road, secure in your knowledge that even though you
cant see, if the road turned, there'd be large reflective warnings beforehand?

------
rubyrescue
what a well written and thought provoking article; i love articles on
technical topics that feel like art.

------
istari
Copied from the other thread on this topic.

Vietnam: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr5Gssaxl6g>

Ikaruga: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-zSi0xt9fY>

