Modal equality through traffic calming.

Modal equality is the ability of walkers and bicyclists to get safe, healthy, accessible, pleasant, and efficient (SHAPE) access on a road network similar to automobiles. We can SHAPE up with 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 approach to reduced auto traffic is to close the intersection itself, since that addresses a crossing network for bikes and peds. Closing 25% of intersections to automobiles will allow other modes like walking cycling and boards to gain access across a city. It will save 50% of the revenue (Half of Belmont's projected road repair bill from auto usage is $15M) and improve throughput- since the direction of traffic on remaining streets is known and can be optimized- like one way roads- eliminating the delay from intersection second guessing. The remaining public works revenue can be better targeted since the options are reduced.

Braes Paradox said that additional roads, or network options, 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 and showed that closing off roads improves throughput.

Design elements like roundabouts, for the optimized network, reduce options for collisions, resulting is saved time and money for drivers. Time magazine 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."