How To Fix a Dangerous Street in 24 Hours or Less
(Source: Flickr.)
Every day in America, pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles. The Governors Highway Safety Association projected there were 6,721 pedestrian deaths in 2020, the largest percentage increase of pedestrian deaths (21%) ever recorded. Smart Growth America has shared shocking statistics that the number of people struck and killed by vehicles has increased 45% between the years 2010 and 2019, totaling to a devastating 53,435 people.
Mainstream media has pushed the blame for this death increase on reckless driving and irresponsible drivers. Strong Towns argues that these fatal accidents are not the result of human error, but the fault of bad street design.
For decades, we have been building our cities to accommodate cars, not people. It’s time to change that. We’ve created a usable guide to help you fix a dangerous street in 24 hours or less.
The main idea from this guide is to begin making permanent changes by implementing temporary or demonstrative ones first. Because, let’s be honest, no one can reinvent an entire traffic planning and engineering team overnight. A more realistic approach is to foster incremental changes and find the paths of least resistance—and that’s exactly what this guide will help you do.
To start, pick your dangerous street, state your objective, and lay out plans for how it could be better constructed. Next, bring in cones, barrels, signs, and other temporary traffic control devices to reshape the area. Don’t expect it to be perfect, make sure to monitor and access the results. Is traffic moving slower? Is it a shorter distance for pedestrians to cross the street? Once you’ve collected the data for your objectives, it’s time to start making moves toward a permanent solution. This last step will, admittedly, take more than 24 hours (unless you know a magical elf who can pop in and construct a new street with the snap of a finger). But now you’ll have some real data and evidence to convince your city why this street should be redesigned and just how simple it really can be
To learn more about how to implement this strategy, check out the full Local-Motive Session, available on demand, including an hour-long workshop, discussion space, and related resources.
