How Sweden Has Redesigned Streets to Route Around Bad Behavior
fastcoexist.com
fastcoexist.com
Planning has played the biggest part in reducing accidents. Roads in Sweden are
built to prioritise safety over speed or convenience. Low urban speed limits,
pedestrian zones and barriers that separate cars from bicycles and oncoming
traffic have helped. Building 1,500km (900 miles) of “2+1” roads—where each lane
of traffic takes turns to use a middle lane for overtaking—is reckoned to have
saved around 145 lives over the first decade of Vision Zero. And 12,600 safer
crossings, including pedestrian bridges and zebra stripes flanked by flashing
lights and protected with speed bumps, are estimated to have halved the number
of pedestrian deaths over the past five years. Strict policing has also helped:
less than 0.25% of drivers tested are over the alcohol limit. Road deaths of
children under seven have plummeted—in 2012 only one was killed, compared with
58 in 1970.Is this the price for saving lives, or do I misunderstand anything? Does the 2+1 road replace 1+1 roads (which is probably a lot more dangerous)?
So yes, you can definitely reduce accidents by forcing everyone into high traffic situations where they have no choice but to drive extremely slowly.
In IT security, you can also reduce hacked computers by making so many security regulations that nobody can actually use the computers. It does work, but nobody really gets their job done.
Or at least, in the case of the state department, it works until your secretary of state moves all of her email onto her own server to avoid your regulations and you end up with a political firestorm.
At some point you probably want to try find solutions that optimize safety and actually getting something done at the same time. Creating traffic isn't a very good solution in the long run, I think.
Well, they have about the same accident rate as walking, and walking is even faster!
> In IT security, you can also reduce hacked computers by making so many security regulations that nobody can actually use the computers. It does work, but nobody really gets their job done.
On the contrary, imposing ridiculous restrictions will cause users to become very creative in bypassing them, thus negating any positive effect they might have.
I take the 2+1 any day.
The newer 2+1 roads have cable barriers in the middle, so even a drunk or sleeping oncoming driver won't kill you. They just total their own car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_barrier
Source: Being Swedish.
Sweden was just lucky to have built such wide 1+1 roads as the norm, so a large part of the major highways were (realatively) easily and cheaply convertible.
The safety difference from 1+1 is huge, and the cost of conversion is negligible compared to a rebuild into a real 2+2 road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B1_road
This is distinct from the sorts of 3-lane roads (more common in Europe than the US) where the central lane is designated simultaneously for passing in either direction. (Which conversely seems really dangerous.)
Note also that rural road costs about $1M/lane-mile in the US (double in urban areas) so 900 miles of 3-lane road is probably at least $2B. If the road lasted a decade, it would make the cost-per-life-saved on the high side of US value of life guidelines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...
It's not very good for safety: many drivers forget or don't see the signage, so driving even in the direction the sign tells you you're allowed can be dangerous.
One cool trick is that the center lane can be shut both ways to allow ambulances and cops to rush the bridge when needed.
It was somewhat common 40 or 50 years ago but it's gone pretty much entirely (replaced by either alternating 2+1 or 1+1 with turn lanes and the like in the middle) because it is, in fact, extremely dangerous.
I came here just to say there was hardly any "how" in the article ((of this post), despite the title claiming "How Sweden Has Redesigned...". The hows in the article are common in many places - like low speed limits and more cameras.
Here is the Wikipedia page of countries ranked by traffic-related deaths (the table headers are sortable) with data from 2013. Sweden has one of the lowest fatality rates per 100,000 inhabitants. But, interestingly, so does the UK with its much bigger population. Is there a common factor between these two countries that explains the low road fatality rates? Or maybe not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
If you use deaths per inhabitabt it wouldn't surprise me that NYC has a very low rate as well (hint: many people don't own cars in NYC).
Infrastructure planning: we have few plane 4-way intersections on high speed roads, most have been replaced with roundabouts.
Most wide highways with oncoming traffic (1+1) have been converted to 2+1 with central barrier, without changing the total width. This removes most high speed collisions. Still lots of accidents but they are now involving cars going in the same direction.
The most important one though is probably much safer cars in recent years. This isn't policy of course, and only tangentially related to Sweden. It's basically helping the bottom line "for free".
Also, not irrelevant: driving drunk is completely socially unacceptable, and the socially acceptable alcohol level is much closer to zero than the legally accepted limit.
- the cyclist and driver should meet at a (near) 90 degree angle, so neither requires eyes in the back of their head
- separate the goddamn lanes so neither car nor cyclist feels uncomfortably close to the other
- don't require extra space because every square meter counts in a big city
Well guess what, we've figured this out decades ago in the Netherlands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
The safety record of bicycle helmets is dubious at best, adds an extra cost for low income people, and makes bike sharing programs near unworkable.
2) Snow
3) Ice
4) Did I mention the cold?
1) It's definitely no colder than taking the metro. I put on significantly less clothes when I hop on my bike an hour from now and with proper clothing I stay dry and ventilated.
2) Snow clearance is prioritized on the bike roads. So far this year snow has only been a problem one day. That's when the snow chaos hit Stockholm. My friend got stuck in a car for 7 hours. My bike commute took 20 minutes longer than normal.
3) I have have studded tyres, I have not installed them this year though. Ice is hardly ever a problem. The bike roads are salted, which, ironically is the biggest problem of them all for me. Salt ruins the bikes, so I recommend using a cheaper bike in the winter.
It's faster, I get an hour of "free" workout each day and I can get to wherever I like inside the city without combining different modes of transportation using and app and standing in the cold waiting. When it's cold outside, I'd rather be moving.
In general I just feel liberated by having a bike, in the sense that I can quickly move from A to B on my own accord; unless you go directly from station to station, you can often beat the metro in terms of speed (without driving fast)). Depending on busses and subways for transportation makes me feel a bit uneasy (which is a bit unreasonable, I know, but the feeling is there). I also get antsy from just sitting all day at work and then on my commute too; the time spent waiting for and sitting in the bus/metro feels like dead time. By comparison, riding a bike makes me feel like I'm on the move and doing something.
But hey, I'm Dutch. My love of bikes is part of my culture. I can totally see how a long commute in the metro can be a moment of relaxation too, in-between work and family life at home; it just doesn't apply to me.
Yes, the Dutch way of building bike lanes are superior, but there's also a lot more bikers in the Netherlands, so it's easier to justify spending money on rebuilding roads instead of retrofitting there.
And a reason for that could be that the infrastructure for riding bikes is so excellent?
Denmark also has an incredibly high spot-tax on cars, which makes biking even more attractive.
I have a bunch of friends in Stockholm though who bought electric-assisted cargo bikes, which make it easy enough to take the kids to school or get to work or go grocery shopping, so that might make biking more attractive overall.
This is a common pattern in The Netherlands, and the one I personally prefer to what you describe, since aside from a full roundabout it offers the best trade-off between safety and commute speed while on a bicycle.
Granted, my experience of The Netherlands is biased towards central Amsterdam, since it's the only place I've lived, but there's plenty of places there where car & bicycle traffic is mixed. It seems fine to me to mix car & bicycle traffic as long as you force the road speed down, or ensure that the bicycles have priority e.g. on left turns.
Seems confusing, especially as their FAQ stipulates the same intersection will revert back to priority to the right at night when the yellow lights are blinking, but admittedly "priority to the guyw ho wins the game of chicken" is the way it works in the rest of the Netherlands anyway.
1. http://groningenfietsstad.nl/en/green-light-for-all-cyclists...
2. Per RVV 1990[3] article 15: "Op kruispunten verlenen bestuurders voorrang aan voor hen van rechts komende bestuurders".
3. http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0004825/2014-03-20 [4]
4. Yes my footnotes now have footnotes.
http://cossdotblog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/upload...
This is madness for cyclist and driver. As a cyclist, I don't like basically taking up the whole line by riding right over the sharrow, which is what I'm supposed to do to avoid being doored. But then a car can't legally pass if there's a double yellow line. And yet they do pass in the U.S. in this case, because the average U.S. driver doesn't know this is illegal, they don't know it because the primary means of learning to drive: parents or family member > other people honking at you and you decide to change your behavior > traffic tickets. There's no mandatory 3rd party (government or private, accredited) school.
And on top of it, everywhere else there are no sharrows, increasingly people think cyclists are riding on those streets illegally, which is not true.
A motorist going 10 mph on a 30 mph speed limit street isn't breaking any law, neither is a cyclist. Driving slow on a single lane road is not impeding traffic anymore than red lights, yield signs, or left hand turns are impeding traffic.
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-ticke...
"The law will excuse your slow driving if you can show:
You were driving slower than the posted speed, but lower speed was "necessary for safe operation" of your vehicle."
> - separate the goddamn lanes so neither car nor cyclist feels uncomfortably close to the other
This requires more space.
> - don't require extra space because every square meter counts in a big city
This requires less space.
Like, it's easy to gripe about any particular traffic design, but the domain is constrained by a large set of fundamentally opposed requirements, so it's always a big compromise in the end.
Second, even if that was not the case, you have no idea how insanely wide many of the sidewalks are in Stockholm. Here, look:
https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Stockholm,+Sweden/@59.34287...
You could fit ten people side-by-side on there. There are a few areas where this is necessary. Most do not, and this is one of the latter. Also note how they squeeze a tiny strip of bike lane between parking and regular road. Even without any other change, there is no reason to prefer road/bike lane/parking over road/parking/bike lane.
BTW, growing up in Canada and spending most of the rest of my life in Japan, I was stunned by how courteous UK drivers (in general) are towards cyclists. When I hear people complain about cycling in the UK, praising the Netherlands, I've got to think it's some sort of cycling paradise. Cycling trip there is definitely on my bucket list.
This. So much this.
This was kind of how I raised kids, moderated forums, etc. When people cannot get along without serious drama, someone running the system has some work to do.
Trying to find someone to blame -- "who started it" -- is a sucky approach. I generally want to figure out how to put a stop to it, not who to point fingers at. And it is an approach that gets uncommonly good results when followed faithfully/to its logical conclusion.
In Sunnyvale there are a number of the 'automatic' speed signs (they show you your speed and flash if it is over the limit) and on the streets near me they do seem to improve compliance when they are active. Of course given that they are two lane streets (one lane in each direction) one compliant driver can keep the entire block compliant :-).
Which is the issue in the first place; the lights not being timed up to /reward/ driving at the indicated speed.
> But unlike almost every other scheme to make roads safer, Vision doesn't try to blame the victim or the perpetrator.
Oh right, because the car safety tech responsible for the lion's share of the lives saved over the past few decades is all about blaming the perpetrator.
We in Sweden have some of the worlds highest standards for drivers tests. You could blame bad drivers and raise the standards even more. But you know what? Some people will drive without even having a license. You can't stop people like that unless you ban cars altogether.
It's about shifting away from an ideological frame of mind, where emphasis is placed on enforcing what's perceived as right and punishing what's perceived as wrong, to looking at the sum of parameters that affect an issue.
Way too much energy is spent trying to find the perfect punishment for single individuals in narrowly perceived circumstances.
One doesn't "accidentally" drive drunk nor "accidentally" text and drive. That's not a mistake, it's an all too common cause of traffic fatalities.
Yes, folks are responsible for not doing these things. But we know people do them nevertheless. Not taking this into account when designing roads and public transport seems like reality denial. All that work to get a product that only works in idealized conditions instead of designing roadways so that you get less deaths from things people are doing anyway.
Right on red is already illegal in New York City.
Pet peeve: 30km/h = 20mph. 30.0km/h = 18.6mph. 50km/h = 30mph, not 31mph. It's so annoying when people don't do significant digits correctly when converting between metric and imperial, it completely breaks the flow.
No, because the imperial speed limit corresponding to 30km/h is 20mph, and imperial drivers would have encountered that and thus would have a clear and absolutely trivial frame of reference. Likewise 50km/h and 30mph.
18.6mph and 31mph is not correct, it's worthless pedantry completely missing the point to the disservice of the reader.
But I completely agree that from a practical perspective, 30 kph = 20 mph, 100 kph = 65 mph, and so on.
And this is exactly the kind of worthless pedantry that masklinn called out.
The real solution is separation of routing layers.
Also, 30km/h is used in the same places that would be 25mph zones in the US, i.e. residential areas and school zones on thoroughfares. The default speed on larger roads in cities is 50km/h, which is just below 35mph, a very common city throughfare speed limit in the US.
And on the flipside, many Swedish freeways have a speed limit of 120km/h, i.e. 75mph, which you're hard pressed to find in the US at all, and certainly not in California. It's only in the last decade they've changed the speed limit to 120km/h, but it's because freeways have been made safer, and cars have been made safer, so it makes sense to raise the limit.
Try getting the speed limit raised in California. I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for that.