When Streets Were For Everyone
Arian Horbovetz (Twitter: @Arianhorbovetz) is a Strong Towns member who blogs at The Urban Phoenix. This post is republished from his blog with permission. You can also check out the Urban Phoenix Podcast for more of Arian’s great work.
“Dude, get out of the road,” you yell. Your enraged state is fueled by someone’s blatant disregard for the fact that you woke up late and are traveling 10 mph over the speed limit, only to encounter a man “jaywalking” across the road in front of you. Your anger bubbles over as you find yourself inconvenienced for a whole nine seconds.
We’ve all been there: Getting behind a car that’s traveling under the speed limit, trying to pass a cyclist with no shoulder, or yelling at a pedestrian who crosses the road outside of a crosswalk with no regard for your time.
Now, let’s step back in time to 1906. Jaywalking—the illegal crossing of a street in a non-designated crosswalk—was 20 years from being a thing. The automobile was just beginning to assert itself as a semi-regular addition to city streets that accommodated a multi-modal construct. Can’t imagine what this looks like? Let’s look at this amazing digitally remastered video of a 1906 San Francisco street car ride.
Lessons from 1906
The most important thing to note in this video is how diverse the street traffic is. Horse and buggy, trolley, automobile, bicycle, pedestrian—they all move at approximately the same speed. The well-to-do owner of the car travels at a speed that is similar to the pedestrian and cyclist. While the driver may be able to enjoy an independent, stress-free commute, he or she is subject to the street congestion caused by many different forms of mobility. And while this low-speed chaos would likely be psychologically catastrophic to the car commuter today, it presents some incredibly meaningful lessons with regard to our streets and their effect on society.
Lesson #1. Multiple Modes of Mobility: Trolleys, carriages, bikes, cars and pedestrians—count the number of different forms of mobility in this video. The streets were truly for everyone, regardless of speed, size, or socioeconomic status.
Lesson #2. Similar Speed: Equitable transportation is rooted in the idea that anyone can access jobs and resources equally, regardless of their socioeconomic status. In this video, pedestrians, mass transit and cars move at a similar speed. The difference in velocity between the most exclusive form of transportation and the most humble form of transportation is negligible. Today, the average 15-minute commute by car is likely to be over an hour by bus. The prioritization of the automobile has completely eradicated equitable access to jobs and resources.
Lesson #3. Density and Community: Slower, more equitable mobility leads to greater, more efficient urban density. Suburban expansion has created an inequitable construct based on “pay-to-play” access of upwardly mobile resources. When multi-modal transportation is encouraged, more efficient and equitable communities are possible.
In the video above, the fastest form of transportation, the cars, are moving at about two or three times the speed of pedestrians. Sure, that difference might be a great deal more on an open road, but the top speed was between 30 and 50 miles per hour for the average Ford—not to mention you needed oil every 250 miles. (Just two years earlier, a driver was given the first speeding ticket in Dayton, Ohio for going 12 mph in a 5 mph zone.)
Low speeds, and the fact that cars were just a slightly faster mode of transportation in a sea of other mobility options, meant 15-20 mile car commutes were simply not practical.
But cars became faster. Car and oil companies became dominant lobbyists in the United States. And highways were built to allow for more sprawl. All these subsidized people’s desire to create exclusive communities outside their city centers.
What Streets Were Meant to Be
I shared this video with a number of friends. The comments back marveled at the clothing, the trolleys, the horses, the man sweeping horse droppings, and the maddening chaos of multi-modal traffic.
When I look at videos like this, I see what cities were like when mobility was far more equitable. Sure, our cities were dirty, crowded, smelly and sometimes scary. Sanitary amenities, cleaner energy, and a host of other legal and environmental issues were still hurdles for cities in 1906.
But the power of the city as the social, economic, and equitable hub of humanity was far greater in 1906 than it is in the U.S. today. Architecture hasn’t changed all that much, save the skyscraper. Street layout is pretty much the same. The big difference is the fact that the formally diverse streets featuring slow traffic have been replaced with exclusive automobile access, allowing those who own cars to speed to their destinations while those who must rely on public transit are subject to maddeningly underfunded networks, long wait times, and inefficient commutes. Those who walk or bike often do so at great physical risk.
The video above shows what streets were meant to be. They were havens for diverse mobility instead of space solely dedicated to speed and the exclusive use of automobiles. Our cities have paid the price for this massive mistake, and, as a result, equity and upward mobility continue to lag compared to much of the rest of the industrialized world.
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