Traffic Calming

Bicycle boulevards close streets to automobiles with chokers and diverters in order to reduce the volume and speed of traffic that peds and bikes contend with. Another way is to close the intersection itself since that addresses a crossing network for bikes and peds. Closing 25% of interections to automobiles will allow other modes like walking cycling and boards to gain access acosss a city. It will also save 50% of the revenue, since two roads are impacted, (Half of Belmont, California's projected road repair bill from auto usage is $15M) and improve throughput- since the direction of traffic is known and can be optimized- similar to  like one way roads- eliminating the delay from interection second guessing. The remaining revenue can be better targeted, optimized to throughput, since the options are reduced. Braes Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox) said that additional roads, or network redundancy, add anarchy into a network. The result is increased congestion.  Physicists Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, along with computer scientist Micheal Gastner, looked at the price of anarchy caused by self-interested drivers (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080904-selfish-driving-causes-everyone-to-pay-the-price-of-anarchy.html) and showed that closing off roads improves throughput. Design elements like roundabouts, for the optimized network, reduce options for collisions (http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/fall95/p95a41.htm), resulting is saved time and money for drivers. Time magazine (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838753,00.html) writes: Carmel, Ind., is driving in circles. Since 2001, the Indianapolis suburb has built 50 roundabouts, those circular alternatives to street intersections that have become a transit fixture in much of the rest of the world. Because roundabouts force cars to travel through a crossroads in a slower but more free-flowing manner — unlike traffic circles, roundabouts have no stop signals — in seven years, Carmel has seen a 78% drop in accidents involving injuries, not to mention a savings of some 24,000 gal. of gas per year per roundabout because of less car idling. "As our population densities become more like Europe's," says Mayor Jim Brainard, who received a climate-protection award this year from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "roundabouts will become more popular."

Speed Kills

Relationship of Vehicle Speed to Odds of Pedestrian Death in Collision Vehicle Speed Odds of Pedestrian Death 20 mph 5% 30 mph 40% 40 mph 84%

"Motorcide"

Motorcide causes death from car crashes, from pollution, and results in speciescide. When they are not running over people, pets, and animals, they pollute the air and water, consume our food through bio fuels and produce CO2 to asphyxiate life on the planet as we know it. Stop "Motorcide" from killing our planet. Lets move within the planet’s CO2 budget for people. Design compact mixed use neighborhoods of sufficient density to support frequent transit service and neighborhood serving businesses. Design healthy neighborhood streets which serve children and seniors and support accessibility for all modes equally. Walking is not "alternative transportation." Ask for 20 mph streets that can enable Neighborhood Electric Vehicles and allow for connected streets on a walking scale. Preserve life. Slowing down saves the world for our children. Walk or bike. The only CO2 a pedestrian or a cyclist creates is when we breathe. Death from Crashes Motorcide kills more than 1.2M people worldwide. In the US our motorcide death rate equates to a Jumbo Jet crash every three days, and a 911 every month. http://cpr-ca.blogspot.com/2008/04/motorcide.html The UN estimates that this is the fastest growing disease segment. Road crashes are the second leading cause of death globally among young people aged five to 29 and the third leading cause of death among people aged 30 to 44 years.  “Thousands of people die on the world’s roads everyday. We are not talking about random events or ‘accidents’. We are talking about road crashes. The risks can be understood and therefore can be prevented,” said Dr LEE Jong-wook, Director-General, World Health Organization. “Road safety is no accident. We have the knowledge to act now. It is a question of political will,” he added. The magnitude of this growing global public health crisis, the risk factors that lead to road traffic deaths and injuries and effective ways to prevent them are detailed in the World report on road traffic injury prevention. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2004/pr24/en/ The problem of crashes is related to speed, http://www.co.henrico.va.us/cc/speedkills/index.htm, distraction, http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/site/nhtsa/menuitem.54757ba83ef160af9a7ccf10dba046a0/, aggressive driving, http://www.aaafoundation.org/resources/index.cfm?button=agdrtext, young drivers, http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/teenmvh.htm, and not sharing priority, http://cpr-ca.blogspot.com/2008/07/priority-for-walkers-and-cyclists.html. In the last 80 years we've engineered the travel environment to provide increasing priority for automobiles from stop lights, multiple lane roadways, and fast curb radius, resulting in an expectation of priority and an inability to share the road with other users. Crashes and the Law http://cpr-ca.blogspot.com/2008/07/jaywalking-is-plutocratic-crime.html Environment Pollution related fatalities, mostly from cars, now exceed auto fatalities. http://cpr-ca.blogspot.com/2008/07/pollution-related-deaths-exceed-traffic.html Cars are toxic for life on the planet. For a CO2 budget for people we need to get to 350 ppm of CO2 (http://350.org) We are presently at 384 ppm and increasing at 1.5 ppm per year. 350 is the most important number on the planet right now and watch the following video: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/06/the-planets-mos.html Walkable cities are the key to the GHG puzzle. In State of the World 2007: Worldwatch writes that cities cover 0.4 percent of the Earth’s surface but generate the bulk of world carbon emissions, making urban areas key to alleviating the climate crisis. More than 70% of GHG come from cities. Molly O'Meara Sheehan writes about urban areas in Volume XXXVIII, Number 1 2001, of the Department of Public Information that, "As cities grow to accommodate motor vehicles, they push built-up areas over forests and farmland, pave over watersheds, and invite accidents and pollution from ever-greater vehicle traffic. Various reports suggest that car-reliant cities not only damage the environment but also worsen social inequities and impede economic growth. As the world becomes more urban, a major challenge for societies will be to reorient current patterns of urban development away from car-dependent sprawl and towards walkable neighbourhoods connected by networks of bicycle paths, bus routes and railways." http://coolbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/03/problem-of-energy-use.html

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