The quality public space found within this small French seaside town of 2,300 people exceeds that of most American cities of 230,000. Count the cars to find out why...
Just as the marathon route closes to thru traffic, waves and waves of people take advantage of 26.2 miles of streets linking all five boroughs. What if we did this more often?
Steal this technology. It saves lives; makes deliveries and emergency vehicles operate faster / smoother; reduces pollution and emissions; makes walking and cycling a breeze; lets children play in the street and allows laughter or the clink of glasses to be heard a block away.
It is not a City's responsibility to provide free space for everyone's personal property, especially when it causes so many negative impacts to city life.
When it comes to sustainable street space allocation, the debate is too often framed as what is lost rather than what is gained. With that in mind, this image shows 46 net on-street parking spaces gained.
Traffic evaporation is a real outcome of sustained policy choices. Paris has reduced traffic by 40% in one decade and it’s a far more livable city because of it.
La pollution de l'air tue, nous ne pouvons regarder ailleurs.
À Paris, en diminuant la place de la voiture, nous avons fait baisser le trafic automobile de 40% en 10 ans, permettant de diminuer de 40% la pollution de l'air. Et nous allons continuer !
Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia - the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in America - is historic and futuristic at the same time, demonstrating how modern life continues on without the undue burden of the private automobile.
Highway removal along the Seine resulted in a 29% traffic reduction in the area, meaning projects like these increasingly feasible. Further vehicle traffic reductions and walking, cycling, and public transport gains are expected as Paris removes 70,000 on-street parking spaces.
“It’s not my duty as mayor to make sure you have a parking spot. For me, it’s the same as if you bought a cow, or a refrigerator, and then asked me where you’re going to put them."
A traffic evaporation experiment is underway in real time. What might we learn🤔
“I don’t know when was the last time I got out of my neighborhood that quick on a Monday,” said John Gramlich, a plumber…There was less traffic than I’m used to having.”
DC friends, how are these pre-cast concrete barriers working in terms of keeping vehicles out? We don't have much of this advanced concrete technology in New York City...
Our neighborhood’s row houses and small to medium-sized apartment building achieves 75 people/acre (48,000/sq mile). It’s a lovely density that yields tremendous walkability. But the secret sauce is the trees, definitely the trees.
Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, and Copenhagen are all different but one of the most underrated design moves found in each of these cities is the prevalence of street lighting strung between buildings rather than street lamps cluttering the public realm. It creates more walkability.
After a few years literally no one misses an urban freeway when it’s gone...younger generations may question if one did ever exist, why?!
@awalkerinLA
@TheWarOnCars
Low cost. Low maintenance. Sittable. The most under-appreciated/underused item in the Quick-Build material palette is the boulder. The new Underhill Bike Blvd strategically uses them to define/reinforce new pedestrian and bike space, and to prevent reduce vehicular incursion.
Paris will restore 11.2 million sq. ft. of usable street space through the removal of 70,000 on-street parking spaces, because: “It’s out of the question to think that arriving in the heart of the city by car is any sort of solution.” -
@Anne_Hidalgo
Paris will fast-track a regional plan, adding 403.8 mi. (650 km) of bikeways (the most yet). Many will be delivered with temporary materials before May 11th when the city re-opens. The plan requires 72% of on-street parking to be removed.
#Covid19Streets
There are 3 generations of bike lanes in the Paris network. The quality has improved but so has the demand, resulting in increased width and better definition from the vehicular and pedestrian realm. The removal of street parking removal will provide the space for growth, gen 4.
This is some of the most valuable real estate in the country but the street, setback, form, density, and (lack of) parking is illegal in the vast majority of the United States.
An important but too often overlooked architectural detail that supports walkability / urbanism is the chamfered corner facade. Park Slope’s 5th and 7th Avenues feature many good examples.
Thompson Street
#Steateries
are keeping businesses afloat but also calm traffic. Cycling this street was a true pleasure, as it felt like humans have priority, not cars.
Cincinnati also emerged from the depths of the pandemic with an impressive number of streateries and pedestrianized blocks. The latter make use of removable bollards, an advanced technology we are still struggling to adopt in NYC.
Rue de Rivoli is a revelation. Even in its temporary form, it proves taking away space from cars is far more powerful than any specific bikeway design. There used to be 28,000 cars per day here and now there are 13,000 bikes and a few taxis. Mostly it’s just quieter.
Leading pedestrian (and bike) intervals are one of the simplest and lowest cost ways to reduce traffic violence. Here’s one of my favorites at Hoyt/Atlantic in Brooklyn.
#CityMath
: Our family went out for dinner + ate in the curbside dining deck. The meal yielded $10.22 in sales tax. We were there for 90 minutes. Ours and 2 other (occupied) tables fit into one parking stall, which over the same period would have yielded $3 in parking revenue...
1/2: One of the most important but overlooked metrics for walkable mixed-use development is the number of doors per linear foot. This single building on Brooklyn’s Court Street does exceptionally well: 100’ in length with 11 doors - 7 for retail.
Breaking:
@NYC_DOT
@NYCMayor
is actively removing the Willoughby Avenue Open Street right now. No communication or process with the community. This is a horrible precedent to set.
@fgopenstreets
In Heidelberg, Germany residents are given one year of free access to public transport after selling their car. This type of pragmatic policy incentive should be offered in every city with a usable PT system.
UPDATE: Louisville, KY quietly overtook Vancouver, and two others in the top five North American cities, with 11 miles of
#Covid19Streets
#OpenStreets
1) Minneapolis: 18 miles
2) Denver: 13.3 miles
3) Louisville: 11 miles
4) Vancouver, BC: 10.53 miles
5) Portland, OR: 7.5 miles
Top 5 North American
#COVIDStreets
#OpenStreets
responses:
1) Denver: 13.3 miles
2) Minneapolis: 10 miles
3) Portland, OR: 7.5 miles
4) Cleveland: 6 miles
5) Winnipeg, MB: 5 miles
🧵 Urbanists and transportation advocates often share this photo of Dr Martin Luther King Jr cycling each year. But the sad reality is that today, most streets named in his honor are not bikesble; they divide communities rather than unite them. Here’s Detroit.
Update: the driver has been charged. The vehicle driven has garnered 161 violations since 2017. That’s one violation every 9 days or so. It’s a massive failure of local and state government to allow people like this to continue operating a motor vehicle. 🤬
In Oslo, no parking doesn't mean no business.
"Well, according to the city, since all those parking spots disappeared, pedestrian activity in the area has risen by 10%." percent.
How does a city add 30,000 people within one square mile but not add any new road capacity? By building densely and investing in walking, cycling, and transit. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
I added all of Downtown Jersey City's Census tracts together and got a population of 73,350, showing 59.4% growth from the 2010 population of 45,992. Super impressive stuff!
The
@Open_Streets
movement has measured many positive impacts (pollution/noise reduction, physical activity gains, economic impact, participation rates). Harder to quantify is the collective joy, the wave of free-flowing endorphins and eye contact that temporarily restores trust.
UPDATE: Barcelona will pedestrianize 7.5 miles of linear streets (322,000 square feet of space!), build 13 miles of additional bike lanes, and add bus lanes to make transit more competitive.
#Covid19Streets
In front of this Paris school on-street parking was removed and replaced with a wider sidewalk, planters, seating, and a raised crossing. This and other variants should be the norm in US cities, never the exception.
Two different types of bike parking at the same Brooklyn business. So, here, once again, is your quarterly reminder that the design of such things matters.
Just flew over Louisville at rush hour. They built a massive new interchange to “fix” congestion they don’t have. If
@AOC
’s
#greennewdeal
or derivatives thereof don’t attack these wasteful subsidies / poor land use policies then we are literally sunk. (4 images for emphasis)
Who saw this coming? Everyone saw this coming.
"But now Open Streets have entered their real-estate amenity era, where they are placed on par with parks and subway stops."
"Newer families are looking for space to roam, not park."
@JohnSurico
@Curbed
At 203.1 miles (327km), Montreal's full package of
#Covid19Streets
surpasses Lima, Peru's 187 miles of temporary bikeways, placing it only behind Paris as the city with the most extensive response.
“The fundamental reason why a dense network of small streets out-performs a sparse hierarchy of [wide] streets is that streets become less (not more) efficient as their size increases."
The fact that a mere $100 metal barricade completely breaks the functional fixedness of how people understand how and who uses street space is an underexplored phenomenon right now. Literally, this is all it takes.
#OpenStreets
#Covid19Streets
“A couple of decades ago, it was perfectly normal to smoke cigarettes inside...Today, very few would do that. I think it’s the same with cars in the city center. One day we will look back + ask ourselves why we ever thought that was a good idea.”
That’s the out of service bus driver trying to find the owner of a double parked car-for 30 minutes-that blocked the street, between unbelievably loud fits of honking. She told me she didn’t want the driver to get a ticket but waking all the little kids on our block was fine. 🙄
Top 10
#Covid19Streets
(active or announced) by lane miles:
1) Paris (403.8)
2) Lima (187)
3) NYC (100)
Portland (100)
4) Oakland (74)
5) Bogota (49.7)
6) Quito (38.9)
7) Auckland (37.9)
8. Minneapolis/St. Paul (36.8)
9. Burlington (25.8)
10. Milan (22)
Total: 1,076 miles
“The transportation agency is considering carving out temporary bike lanes and taking away traffic lanes from cars by using orange cones or movable barriers.” Call me 🤙?
#tacticalurbanism
Pearl Street Triangle Plaza appreciation 🧵 In 2007 I was living in Miami and this image totally rocked my world. A rapid but simple transformation made with low-cost and flexible materials. 🤔 I wanted to live in
@JSadikKhan
’s New York City.
Winning
@TheWarOnCars
. Oslo has only 50 parking spaces in the city center. A common sense policy where walking, cycling, + transit all work together with good land use mix, a moderate density, and a number of connected pedestrian streets and public space.
If you could add 87 linear plazas to your city at once, save 100,000 jobs by removing asinine bureaucracy, remove thousands of parking spaces in your city in one fell swoop, and more permanently activate streets and sidewalks, would you? NYC just did.
Portland, Maine closed several streets to vehicular traffic for dining but barricaded them with concrete blocks stacked on top of each other. Here, they have adapted, adding the skills and resources of the parks and rec department. Pic: Troy R Bennett for the Bangor Daily News
Why walkability matters: running out of milk just before toddler bedtime shouldn’t require a 20 minute there and back trip down the arterial, only a 200 ft. walk. In most places in the US we unwittingly eroded the solution to a problem most no longer recognize: proximity.