Photo of the Day, November 6, 2009: Newburyport Night 1
Heroic MBTA Operator and Inspector Honored: Saved Woman's Life
Week Around the Ists, November 1–7
Sunday Happenings
Book It: Book Events November 8–14
LivableStreets, a group dedicated to making our streets more, well, livable, hosted a StreetTALK with transportation engineer Gary Toth on Thursday. The talk raised a lot of questions but also provided a lot of answers regarding how communities can make their streets shared spaces where both people and cars can function.
Toth began by talking about ingrained beliefs that we as a culture share regarding transportation. Contrary to what you might expect, traffic engineers don't always do what's best; they're often caught up in ingrained beliefs as well. One of the false but widely held tenets that Toth criticized is "bigger, faster, straighter," a philosophy based on making roads more suitable to carry more traffic at faster speeds rather than more people at safer speeds. Other ingrained beliefs include the concept that more roads automatically reduce traffic, and that roads should be designed to accommodate rush hour traffic--thus making for large, empty roads ("concrete soccer fields," as Toth called them) at other times of the day.
Improving roads and communities starts with questioning that idea that roads are meant only to transport cars quickly--to "help you get to that traffic jam 30 seconds faster," in Toth's words. Maybe we should, instead, focus on getting people places faster, and on giving people more places to go (and thus less reason to go elsewhere). Much of the work Toth covered is aimed at slowing traffic by methods other than simply reducing the speed limit. A surprising amount can be accomplished by just adding visual cues, like lane stripes, medians, curb extensions, and more, or by widening sidewalks. Slower roads are also nicer to sit by; slowing traffic and adding benches and planters can make streets pleasant places to be rather than noisy, dangerous places to avoid.
More on meaningful transportation--and how you can help--after the jump! Cartoon by Andy Singer.
Toth blames much of today's dysfunctional transportation system on "functional classification" of roads, which classifies roads only by their intended use (arterial, collective, or local), not context. This means that a "local" road in the Montana wilderness has essentially the same classification and standards as a "local" road in the middle of Cambridge. Under the functional classification system, local roads were intended to increase access to places and services, while arterial roads were intended to increase mobility from place to place. Toth argues instead that communities have been built around arterial roads, increasing the access possible from arterial roads and thereby increasing traffic, negatively affecting mobility.
Toth's Project for Public Spaces has a program called Streets as Places that tries to make streets into places for people to be rather than vessels for cars to traverse. Many streets in Cambridge already fit the bill to some extent, and it would be nice to have more streets that are livable rather than drivable.
Attendees added to Toth's perspective, suggesting the benefits of using health as a motivator to reduce driving and wondering how hybrids and deduced collections from the gasoline tax will affect the transportation situation. The parking situation was also addressed--as long as there's parking available, people will drive--as was a traditionally unresponsive system that has led people to avoid addressing issues.
Toth says "humans are sort of sloppy people," which accounts for how our streets have developed around cars' needs instead of our own. If you'd like to help our streets--and our transportation system in general--become better planned and more functional, check out LivableStreets' upcoming events. Tomorrow night features a meeting of the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership (STEP) at 7pm at 259 Lowell St. STEP focuses on improving transportation access in Somerville.
Ultimately, better streets will make for better living--for all of us.
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Hilarious comment. I'm guilty of it myself - I can't drive my car Tuesday - Friday of this week, and am like "HOW WILL I GET TO WORK?". Dude, I only live 2 miles away, I could totally bike. And I will.