Making Cities Walk-able

In American cities at least,there is an uneasy relationship between the car and the pedestrian. The auto is an integral part of getting people and goods in and out of the city. But at the same time it is a danger – and a deterrent to pedestrian.

There are many solutions being implemented now. Some of those are the congestion tax in London, which uses tolls to reduce the number of cars on central London. Other cities have adopted skyways and undergrounds to separate the cars and the people.  Still others use speed bumps, in lane obstructions, and other devices to slow vehicles. Car only – and pedestrian only – routes also serve to give the vehicle and the person a “freeway”.

Still another class of technology improves the relationship between the cars and the people. Well ordered cross walks with signals (visual and auditory), sculpted sidewalks and ramps, and cameras make a great difference in the safety and efficiency of the city.

Something that I have not seen – and which seems worth trying - is to reconfigure the cross streets so that there are fewer – but better intersections. A typical block in Hartford has major streets and minor streets. So, for example, Farmington Avenue has major cross over streets like – Trout Brook, South Main, Prospect, etc. but then has numerous minor streets that also empty into Farmington Avenue.

The proposal in a nutshell – would be to eliminate non-critical minor street access to Farmington Avenue. Extending the sidewalk across those minor streets, and potentially, even building a house or store on the resultant lot would accomplish this. The traffic would have to circle make to a major crossroad. The quid pro quo is that intersections would be managed efficiently and upgraded to allow greater through put. Pedestrians would have longer stretches of uninterrupted sidewalk and better-maintained intersections to cross. Any business which allows cars to cross a sidewalk would have traffic flow analysis done in order to minimize the number of times that a car crosses a sidewalk. Again though the reduced number of crossings could be made technically better resulting in win wins for driver and pedestrian.

I would love to hear thoughts on this. Has it been tried anywhere that you know of? Could you imagine that people on the minor streets would accept it? What are the pluses and minuses?