When actor Timothée Chalamet got stuck in traffic on the way to a movie premiere, he showed that rethinking how we travel can lead to better outcomes for everyone.
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While long-term safety initiatives like updating street design standards or starting a crash response team are important, they must be paired with immediate action. A recent crash in Rochester, New York, shows why.
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A mysterious plastic sign appeared on a Houston street, raising the speed limit to 60 mph — double the actual limit. Drivers didn’t seem to notice the difference.
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After a fatal crash, Rochester citizens and officials got to work, identifying factors that contributed to the crash, updating street design policies to make streets safer, and establishing a Community Traffic Safety Team to address other dangerous factors before crashes occur.
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The terms chosen to describe upcoming road work often misrepresent the actual projects, ascribing a positive or negative bias that affects how political leaders interpret and underwrite them. The DOT Decoder is the perfect gift for decoding three common terms used by departments of transportation and their engineers.
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Conducting a walking audit is an quick, easy and free step that anyone can take to start improving their place. In this article, trained architect and urban designer Edward Erfurt demonstrates how to do so, using a recently completed sidewalk project in his community as an example.
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Liability caps mean that a city can’t be forced to pay victims of traffic crashes above a certain amount, even in cases of gross negligence. This may seem unjust, but this kind of protection can encourage city officials and employees to be proactive in addressing past mistakes and making streets safer. Here’s how.
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Like many Strong Towns advocates, you may struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling like you’re not qualified enough to talk to city officials and staff about changing the way cities are designed or operated. But it’s essential that you keep speaking up. Here’s why.
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At Strong Towns, we're very conscious of the words we use and the way we tell stories, especially those involving car crashes. It's not because we're trying to be dramatic; it's because we're trying to change the conversation entirely. And you play an important part.
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You can’t call something an accident if you’re not doing anything to prevent it. You definitely can’t call it an accident if you intentionally put people in harm’s way through the design of your streets and the positioning of your infrastructure.
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The Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio is one of the toughest projects I’ve ever worked on. Analyzing crashes that ruined people’s lives is heartbreaking, especially when knowing that quick and easy responses could’ve prevented them. But it’s worth it to make those streets safer, to save lives and to shift the national conversation around crashes to be more humane and effective.
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To make streets safer, we need to change the way people think about car crashes. And we need your help to do it. So, here’s the executive summary of the new “Beyond Blame” report, which shares the most important insights and recommendations from 18 months of Crash Analysis Studios.
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The design of a roadway should reflect its intended use: streets should be designed for safety and building community wealth, while roads should be designed for fast travel. Here’s an example of safe road design and how you could apply it to a stroad.
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On this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck discusses street safety with Melany Alliston, a project manager and civil engineer with Toole Design.
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In many cities, officials recognize that it's better to stop a problem from occurring than try to control it after the fact. When faced with a recurring problem (like riotous parties), they pass ordinances that target its root causes. Why not do the same with street safety?
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Designing streets to encourage safe behavior is a powerful tool for creating lasting prosperity. But when cars are designed to encourage unsafe behavior, it threatens to undo that progress.
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Nice, California, doesn’t have nice streets. But it could, if city planners started thinking about road infrastructure in a way that prioritizes safety and walkability over asphalt. Here are a couple of redesign options, inspired by a Crash Analysis Studio held in the city.
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When trying to make a walkable and vibrant street, urban planners often think in terms of hard infrastructure like road width and crosswalks. But soft infrastructure, specifically flowers and other colorful plant life, plays an important role as well.
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Traffic calming interventions are best when they not only make the environment safer for everyone outside of a car, but when they do so in a way that reduces the mental load for drivers.
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There’s no excuse: when members of a community see a dangerous street for what it is, it shouldn’t take a death (or several deaths) for the city to finally take action.
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