The mighty — and automatic — bollard is an important city-building tool that isn’t employed nearly enough in North America. It’s typically used to control car access to small pedestrian-only or pedestrian-first streets. But I guess if you don’t have any of these, then you may not feel the need to install such a device. The above photos are from Bordeaux. And if you want to gain access, you need to hit the intercom button and explain why you’re local traffic. Can you think of any streets in your city that could use a system like this? I can think of many in Toronto.
One of the characteristics of streets is that once you lay them out, they tend to be fairly permanent. This can be a benefit when you get it right, like in the case of Manhattan's celebrated grid plan. But it can be a real challenge when you get it wrong, or when you've designed them around a particular use and you then later decide that you want something different. In my view, one of the greatest city building challenges around is trying to take a place that was designed exclusively for cars and turn it into a place that is designed for pedestrians. That said, the above video by Spin is a great reminder that there are lots of things that can be done, and in some cases they don't necessarily need to cost a lot of money. In this video, they transform an intersection in Salt Lake City into a safer and more enjoyable place for pedestrians and for people riding bikes and scooters.
Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America -- a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road -- 9 at most intersections -- and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.
From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.
The other telling stat for me is the road's crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.
This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it's no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.
I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.
Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.
The mighty — and automatic — bollard is an important city-building tool that isn’t employed nearly enough in North America. It’s typically used to control car access to small pedestrian-only or pedestrian-first streets. But I guess if you don’t have any of these, then you may not feel the need to install such a device. The above photos are from Bordeaux. And if you want to gain access, you need to hit the intercom button and explain why you’re local traffic. Can you think of any streets in your city that could use a system like this? I can think of many in Toronto.
One of the characteristics of streets is that once you lay them out, they tend to be fairly permanent. This can be a benefit when you get it right, like in the case of Manhattan's celebrated grid plan. But it can be a real challenge when you get it wrong, or when you've designed them around a particular use and you then later decide that you want something different. In my view, one of the greatest city building challenges around is trying to take a place that was designed exclusively for cars and turn it into a place that is designed for pedestrians. That said, the above video by Spin is a great reminder that there are lots of things that can be done, and in some cases they don't necessarily need to cost a lot of money. In this video, they transform an intersection in Salt Lake City into a safer and more enjoyable place for pedestrians and for people riding bikes and scooters.
Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America -- a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road -- 9 at most intersections -- and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.
From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.
The other telling stat for me is the road's crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.
This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it's no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.
I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.
Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.
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