|
|
|
Maps Updated!
|
Slow streets,
safer driving?
KEVIN
MCGRAN
Toronto
Star July 26, 2005 That's the theory of American doctoral candidate Eric Dumbaugh, who found that roads with wide sidewalks and streetscape treatments such as trees are safer because the busy street scene causes drivers to slow down. "When we design roadways for higher speeds in urban areas, people get the sense they can safely travel at higher speeds," he explained. "What happens actually in these environments is there are other things, pedestrians, turning movements, that ... increase their likelihood of being in a crash." But roads become safer when they are narrower, there are trees alongside to give a closed-in feeling and when there is space for pedestrians and cyclists, Dumbaugh said. The City of Toronto is already working to slow traffic on many major roadways, said Greg Stewart, program manager in transportation planning for the City of Toronto. "You don't see a lot of one-way streets in urban Toronto (that) are designed to move traffic in the fastest possible way," he said. "Overall, there's been a thrust in planning to put an emphasis on the urban design on streetscapes and the development along the avenues." So roads like Eglinton Ave. and Kingston Rd., will, in time, look more like Queen St. and St. Clair Ave. But making roads feel more urban goes against decades of conventional wisdom among planners. In the 1960s, engineers concluded that some drivers would always make errors and drive unsafely; in response, they began designing roads to be "forgiving," with wide lanes and unobstructed sightlines. This often meant pedestrians used narrow sidewalks and there was little or no streetscaping. Initially, it gave drivers a sense of security. But problems began once more businesses and homes started to compete for road space designed to speed cars along, said Dumbaugh, whose article "Safe Streets, Livable Streets" appears in this summer's issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. Adding driveways and intersections to a road designed for speed "will create conflicts," he said, "not just between pedestrians and cars, but between people driving in and out of driveways and people driving on the main thoroughfare." In the 905 region, the debate over road space is well underway. York Region, for example, is embarking on an ambitious plan to introduce rapid transit to the region along Highway 7 and Yonge St. New high-speed buses will debut in September. The plan is to turn over a significant portion of both those major routes to rapid transit vehicles in 15 to 20 years. In the interim, regional staff are examining how to make their major roads more pedestrian friendly. "It's been something we've been thinking about for the last while," said Paul Jankowski, general manager of roads for York Region. "As we widen roads through some of our more urban areas ... (we're) very interested in designing roads with a little better integration to the surrounding community." Dumbaugh argues the debate shouldn't focus on drivers' or pedestrians' interests but on overall safety. "A pedestrian death is equally as bad as a motorist's death," said Dumbaugh. "What we need to start looking at is not how many pedestrians are getting hurt, or how many people in cars are getting hurt, but how many people are getting hurt."
Back to Press Room |