Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Potholes, low cost solution, for pedestrian safety.

Pedestrians are essential for a low energy future. We need walkable cities so that fossil fuels can stay in the ground.

Yet the police cannot guarantee pedestrian safety since the job to monitor all the roads all the time is beyond their capability and broke cities are cutting services anyway. Distracted drivers continue to prowl the streets with immunity and are actually increasing in numbers. Caltrans and city have design goals that emphasize throughput, wider and faster streets, at the expense of life; which Context Sensitive Solutions is meant to solve but is not applied because of throughput!

That is why increasing potholes on most roads would be safer. Drivers would have to actually watch where they are going as they negotiate around potholes instead of bowling over pedestrians. This is a natural low cost way of addressing problems with access. Its a good thing we are broke and "our state roads have deteriorated." This editorial also says that congestion has worsened. But that is a different problem- a function of Caltrans throughput from the surrounding sprawl into the road challenged built out Bay Area.

No comments: