A cover story idea for the Washington Post Magazine

Catch this article from a couple weeks ago, "The Future of Crossing the Street," subtitled "Boston drivers are bad, but Boston pedestrians might be worse. Now some very smart people think they've got the answers to help everyone play nice on our roads."," the cover story for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.

Now, maybe I am just an old fuddy duddy, but despite the points made in the recently published book Traffic that as long as the road is simplified, it's easy to make catastrophic driving mistakes (a similar point made a few years ago by Malcolm Gladwell in an article, "Wrong Turn," in the New Yorker from 2001), I have too many experiences with automobile drivers screaming at runners or bicyclists to believe all of a sudden that shared spaces can work.

However, I do think this can be done gradually. One place to start is with the widespread use of Belgian Block pavements on neighborhood-residential streets that experience a fair amount of traffic, or otherwise possess "racetrack" like tendencies favoring high speeds.


Other ways of dealing include the UK Road Witch project and the ideas of Portland's City Repair.

This report from the UK is also quite good, and made me rethink how I look at public spaces: Living Spaces: Cleaner, Safer, Greener and the companion website Cleaner Safer Greener Communities.
-------
Note, today's letters to the editor did run a good one, countering the foolishness I wrote about yesterday. See " They're Everyone's Roads."