Would we be better off if many intersections were redesigned, to get rid of most of the traffic signs and the traffic lights? Many traffic engineers think so, following in the example of the late Hans Monderman. From The Wilson Quarterly:
And Monderman certainly changed the landscape in the provincial city of Drachten, with the project that, in 2001, made his name. At the town center, in a crowded four-way intersection called the Laweiplein, Monderman removed not only the traffic lights but virtually every other traffic control. Instead of a space cluttered with poles, lights, “traffic islands,” and restrictive arrows, Monderman installed a radical kind of roundabout (a “squareabout,” in his words, because it really seemed more a town square than a traditional roundabout), marked only by a raised circle of grass in the middle, several fountains, and some very discreet indicators of the direction of traffic, which were required by law.
As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he wasn’t struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process—stop, go—the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic.
A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”
It should be noted that what Monderman advocated wasn’t simple anti-government libertarianism; despite the title of this post, it’s not just smashing the traffic lights. It’s using the tools of government to create a context in which drivers and others are cautious:
Monderman suggested to the villagers, who as it happens had hired a consultant to help improve the town’s aesthetics, that Oudehaske simply be made to seem more “villagelike.” The interventions were subtle. Signs were removed, curbs torn out, and the asphalt replaced with red paving brick, with two gray “gutters” on either side that were slightly curved but usable by cars. As Monderman noted, the road looked only five meters wide, “but had all the possibilities of six.”
The results were striking. Without bumps or flashing warning signs, drivers slowed, so much so that Monderman’s radar gun couldn’t even register their speeds. Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity. Unsure of what space belonged to them, drivers became more accommodating. Rather than give drivers a simple behavioral mandate—say, a speed limit sign or a speed bump—he had, through the new road design, subtly suggested the proper course of action.
On the other hand, it seems that some intersections are improved by doing nothing more than turning the traffic lights off:
Awesome. Pure genius! But I can improve on this. Lets remove airbags, safety belts, and ABS, and place a 30cm spike in the center of the steering wheel. This way, people will feel A LOT less secure, will slow down to 5kph, never fail to use their signals and will look both ways thrice at every intersection.
Well, traffic may slow down a tiny leeeetle bit, and residents of quite a few places will have to give up driving, but hey, LIVES will be saved.
Of course, if you take 10,000 daily commuters who drive just 15 miles each way, and reduce their average speed from 60mph to 40mph, you destroy a human life every year (do the math)… and when a traffic light dies at the Grant exit on the I210, the highway backs up 20miles, and a dozen thousands of people lose half an hour of their lives.
What I am trying to say is that where there is no traffic to speak of, you can get away with removing signs. You make the lives of a few people less pleasant, but the effect is minimal. What works even better is a well designed, well marked, modern roundabout. But those are beneficial only when you have enough land and not too much traffic.
In most cases, stop signs and traffic lights are still the best solution, short of social engineering to reduce traffic.
Am I the only one who sees a parallel between Mr Monderman making people feel less secure (i.e. feel bad) in order to motivate them to drive more safely, and Mrs Obama making kids dislike themselves (i.e. feel bad) in order to motivate them to exercise?
Both strategies may be effective in achieving their immediate goal, but I find them morally suspect and ultimately counterproductive.
@ Sebastian: The article explicitly stated that at least buses (and I assume also cars) needed LESS time to to cross the intersection: “A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third.”
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but maybe there is some kind of self-organization going on. Also, I do not know if this would work in a bigger city. BUT Drachten actually isn’t that small, and while I don’t know the square described I know traffic in the Netherlands which is not to be underestimated (after all, it is a small country with a relatively high population).
Might work in some places, but it really depends on the tenor of the community. My city has two areas with roundabouts (one in one spot, and another spot with three or four about 15 miles away)… people just cannot seem to drive in them around here.
But then, based on every other issue in my city, my neighbors first reaction to feeling less secure is some variation on KILL IT… KILL IT WITH FIRE…
I think something like this is unofficially happening in Danville, Illinois. Danville is a very economically depressed area (and has been since the 80s) about 100 miles south of Chicago. They’ve been removing traffic lights at intersections over the past decade to cut down on maintenance costs, but have also been removing stop signs and replacing them with “caution—proceed at your own risk” signs.
Folks who live there tell me that there are more accidents where the stop signs have been removed . I would guess that four-way stop signs are more effective at producing self-organization than “caution—proceed at own risk” signs.
Now, Danville is slightly smaller than Drachten (according to Google!), but the way those two cities developed is probably a whole lot different. Danville used to be a Rust Belt manufacturing powerhouse back in the day—large main streets, busy intersections, mixed zoning in older parts of the city (which there, is just about everywhere). There are no roundabouts, and many intersections don’t have a whole lot of “setback”—the line of vision isn’t far because buildings or trees block the way. Higher speed limits on the main drags and sight lines obscured by hills……ahh, trust me…it was easier when stop signs and stop lights were functional. Thankfully, I seldom have to go there, but I haven’t noticed any inclination on the part of drivers to slow down for their neighbors who are trying to cross an intersection, or trying to turn onto a main drag (from an intersection that previously had stop lights). I’d love to see the stats on traffic accidents there; I’d bet they were higher than in other Illinois cities of its size that kept their signs.
There are limits to the approach.
I think of it as being like stock trading. The system will not work if everything is minutely and tightly regulated; transactions will become too expensive and there will be paralysis. Nor will the system work if there is no regulation; shrinkage costs will become too high and there will be paralysis.
Instead, the optimum lies around a happy middle ground of moderate, predictable regulation that aims to check abuses and provide fair play for all comers, while leaving luxurious freedom of individual choice and discretion. Stop people from stealing, but leave them free to make bad choices for themselves and bear the consequences thereof.
Monderman’s insight is that when people are asked to engage reasonably with the system, their effective performance will be very high. His research suggests that, within reasonable boundaries, it is difficult to replicate that level of performance (and by performance I pretty much mean safety and non-death from traffic accidents) by cybernetic means – by taking away individual choice and responsibility and replacing it with a machine-run, putatively superior, set of choices.
The safest machine is not always the machine with the most safety features or the best-designed cutting guards or the strongest protective shielding. The safest machine, rather, is the one to which an alert and competent human is giving his or her full attention. Monderman does not suggest that we cease attempting to make life safer; he is suggesting that there are iatrogenic results from some such attempts.
Boston has a number of rotaries in it (use of the terms “roundabout” or “traffic circle” mark one as being an out-of-towner). Some people hate them, some people love them. They do take up more room than a stanard interesection, I think. Me, I love them. I have no idea what their accident statistics are.
The point of the linked article is not “smash the traffic signs”. It’s more about dividing spaces up so that they’re not all automobile-oriented which, according to the guy who’s promoting the book the essay is drawn from, makes drivers more careful.
I guess he’s never had to deal with one of our local traffic hotspots where there are no signs, or guidelines, and people have to use their own ‘caution’ to figure out what may be confusing or difficult-to-navigate roads. I invite anyone who really believes pulling stop signs promotes the Freedom of Mankind to drive through the Macarthur Maze and observe how the lack of signs, guides or traffic signals of any kind freely assists drivers in fucking up traffic and threatening the safety of other drivers.
Am I the only one who sees a parallel between Mr Monderman making people feel less secure (i.e. feel bad) in order to motivate them to drive more safely, and Mrs Obama making kids dislike themselves (i.e. feel bad) in order to motivate them to exercise?
Drivers aren’t an oppressed class, and feeling secure in driving faster than you should anyway is not something we should promote on par with being comfortable in your own body.
As a biker, when the traffic lights go out (which they used to do along my commute on a pretty regular basis) it makes things WAY easier if you are going along a major thoroughfare, where all the cars are going. They are much more careful and follow the speed limit and tend not to rush up to the intersection (the way they do, here, when the light is just about to turn red or green).
But trying to cross those major thoroughfares with no lights, the only way is if there is a big car with an aggressive driver going your way – someone who will butt out into the traffic whose vehicle is big enough to see. There’s no way to get a gap in traffic naturally during rush hour on a 3- or 4-lane street, and there is absolutely no way cars will stop for anything that it won’t hurt them to hit – they don’t stop for bikes or pedestrians at all, or even small cars – only SUVs or larger.
I think Americans are too invested in vehicular libertarianism to stand for this–certainly, the idea of a space that’s not automobile-oriented confuses and frightens people. On the other hand, while reading this someone on TV pointed out that people stream through Grand Central Terminal in all directions and collide infrequently, with no traffic lights or lane markers. Of course, most people have better maneuverability than most cars.
And most spaces in which people walk are more than two “lanes” wide.
And most spaces in which people walk are more than two “lanes” wide.
And much better visibility of/to oncoming “traffic”. Plus, it’s easier to change position and/or direction at 3-4mph walking, than 30-40 mph (or more) driving. Most places in the U.S. were designed with the automobile (and traffic signs) in mind. Taking away the signs without changing the design that made those signs necessary is a recipe for more accidents. The narrow streets, lack of right-angled grid, roundabouts and such in Europe already serve a design function to slow down traffic.
It’s been tried in the US – they’re called traffic circles, and they are hell on earth. One experiment in one intersection in one small European town just does not generalize, especially in the US, where car traffic is much heavier and drivers are very aggressive and have very intense attitudes of entitlement. You give US drivers an inch and they will take a mile. All you’ll achieve is to make bicycling and walking more dangerous.
What’s needed in the US is an attitude change – the attitude that equates driving a car with freedom and that relegates mass transit to “those people” – the poor, immigrants, queer people. We we fund mass transit (including Amtrak) to even one quarter the level that we subsidize roads, and when we expect people to pay the true cost of driving (global warming, dependence on other nations for oil, use of said dependence as an excuse for continued US colonialist adventures in the Middle East), then issues with traffic safety will improve.
Drachten is a town in Holland with a population of 44,000 and centuries old social and racial homogeneity in a nation where car use is limited by fuel cost, a robust public transit system and other factors which don’t exist in America.
Context is everything in traffic engineering and trying to generalize from these unique circumstances is absurd. It would be like saying that because a low traffic road in a flat plain can get by with no signs, lane markings or lights, we can eliminate such things on a winding mountain road.
Despite statements to the contrary, this post (if not the original source)is “simple anti-government libertarianism” trying to apply a universal panecea where none exists and is even counterproductive. There is a somewhat patronizing subtext to parts of this discussion, as if stop sign use results from those inferior to Drachten – again a small, racially homogenized town. It’s kind of like when able-bodied cyclists with limited commutes sneer at non-cycle for being lazy, while ignoring all the other factors involved.
American traffic engineering is certainly in desperate need of improvement and change. The main thing this article shows is fewer cars and more mass transit means less effort to control traffic. A good idea, but in need of a bit less utopian class condescencion.