Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

minimal road rage

I came across a story in Wired today that just blows my mind. A possible new trend in road design: removing traffic signs, lights and other traffic flow cues to slow traffic and make roads more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly. (“Roads Gone Wild” - Dec. 2004)

Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job. “The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman says. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”

Monderman is one of the leaders of a new breed of traffic engineer - equal parts urban designer, social scientist, civil engineer, and psychologist. The approach is radically counterintuitive: Build roads that seem dangerous, and they’ll be safer…

Monderman and I stand in silence by the side of the road a few minutes, watching the stream of motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians make their way through the circle, a giant concrete mixing bowl of transport. Somehow it all works. The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. “I love it!” Monderman says at last. “Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrians, and everyone looks out for each other. You can’t expect traffic signs and street markings to encourage that sort of behavior. You have to build it into the design of the road.”

The result here is that the lack of the usual cues forces drivers to be more aware of their surroundings, and makes them more engaged with the communities they might otherwise avoid or tunnel-vision through.

It’s certainly an interesting example of a “less is more” design aesthetic and the use of design cues built into the system rather than explicit instructions to guide user behavior. I don’t know how practical these urban planning ideas are for, say, larger population centers in the U.S., but they’re no less fascinating.

(Actually, they seem like a bit of a throwback to pre-automobile city planning, with the reliance on circles at major intersections to regulate traffic. I know I certainly slow down and pay more attention when I’m driving through the circles in D.C. … largely due to a healthy dose of fear and confusion. However, if the urban planner interviewed in the Wired story is to believed, maybe that’s a good thing?)