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Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

The trouble is that we’re rarely “building sidewalks and roads” in a large empty space. Either there is already a road there, or there’s other immovable constraints like buildings and landmarks. If you’ve got some large empty space, then sure you can build a safe road and sidewalk. But the reality is that’s rarely possible, especially in urban areas that were originally planned in the horse and buggy era. The roads in the UK are narrow, and there’s limited parking space, so people park half on the sidewalk and make the road even narrower.

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I’m not really sure why a large empty space is needed to build a safer road/sidewalk?

Just looking out my front door (suburban DC)… the road is posted 35mm but you can “safely” go 50+ because the lanes are wide and relatively straight. But, there are uncontrolled/no-signal entrances to neighborhoods every 1/4 mile or so, so speeds really should be <30mph (IMO). There are very few signaled pedestrians crossings, so if you need to cross, it’s a game of frogged, or walk a mile out of your way to the nearest full intersection. The bike lanes on the road are just painted on, no protection for cars. And on and on. None of this requires more space - just DOT employees who can think beyond getting around in a car.

We could easily slow the road by narrowing the lane. We could easily add signalled ped crossings. We could easily make the sidewalks continuous (same grade through intersections instead of road level - the benefit is cars enter “pedestrian space” when crossing instead of the other way around). We could add floppy bollards (not sure what they’re called) to give more separation between cars and bicycles (won’t stop a really bad driver, but will at least stop cars from using the bike lane as yet another car lane).

A lot of roads in British and European cities are not like that at all; it's not uncommon that they're narrow enough that they're one-way streets because it's wide enough for only one car.

I just picked a random location in Bristol: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4365588,-2.5893081,3a,75y,28... – lots of Bristol streets are like that, and lots of streets in other cities are like that.

In some places what you're saying does apply, but by and large, it's not like American road design.

Even that example shows some thought has been put into non-car users.

The road itself is one way for car traffic, but two way for bikes. This likely allows a non-main road cut though for bike traffic.

The pavement (sidewalk) outside the front of the school is double the width and has bollards along it to stop cars parking on the pavement. This slow massively narrows the road to you’ll likely be driving about 20-30mph regardless of the speed limit.

The junction behind the initial street view has a tiny traffic island with a bollard to protect bikes coming the “wrong way” out of the one way road from cars turning into it. Without that cars turning right into it would always cut that corner.

Given the space constraints it’s actually a pretty well designed street.

Those signs indicate 20km/h! I've never seen a speed limit sign in the united states under 25mph.

As other have noted, it's 20mph, which is pretty common in cities in the UK. In that example even the more major road with two way traffic and a seperated bike lane is 20mph.

30mph is more common in towns.

You might see 40mph if going through a rural village.

50mph isn't too common, but you sometimes see it on smaller or busier major road (A roads).

60mph is the "national" speed limit for major roads and rural roads for cars. Some of these are narrow and twisty, so 60mph should be seen as a maximum, not a recommendation of how fast to actually go. For example, this road in Cornwall[0] would be under national speed limit of 60mph, but you'd have to be insane to drive at that speed. The national speed limit is actually lower for vehicles over 3 tonnes or towing (50mph) or heavy good vehicles and busses (40mph), which is why the signpost for national speed is a white circle with a black cross through it rather than a number.

You'll be 70mph on most motoways (highways) and for cars on national speed limit roads with a central reservation.

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/9Tw4fkxviXbN2Fxy9

UK uses imperial for road markings; it's 20 miles per hour, or ~33km/h.

20mph does get signed in some areas for traffic calming. NYC is dropping from 25 to 20 soon.

Yeah, default residential is 25mph in the US, which IMO is too fast for areas where kids might be running about. The only time I've seen lower is private neighborhood streets.

Yeah, overall Bristol isn't too bad – I've lived in worse places. However, many footpaths are very narrow – sometimes not even enough for two people to walk side-by-side – and there just isn't any more space unless you half the parking. That would actually be good eventually IMHO, but is a far larger change than the previous poster was suggesting.

In some ways these small narrow roads are better by the way, even for non-cars. Everyone understands the need to share the road. Big roads seem to create a "this is for cars only and everything else doesn't belong here and shouldn't be here" type of mindset.

I agree. Two lanes of parked cars is in some ways a "waste of space", but in areas with houses built before cars it's not actually too bad. Naturally keeps the speed of cars passing through pretty low so biking in the road isn't too dangerous.

It's funny how used we get to our surroundings. That street isn't narrow at all, it fits two rows of parked cars alongside it. If only it was possible to reclaim that dead space...

Yeah, I was definitely thinking of typical American-style neighborhood street design. My family is Scottish, and I visit every few years, so I'm familiar with hour smaller towns are often laid out (similar to what your link depicts).

I'm guessing streets like the one you share are narrow enough that cars don't usually try going 50mph? And as noted, there is a fair bit of thought given - bollards at the intersection and school, etc.

Here's the street I was talking about... https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9397759,-77.353558,3a,75y,12...

Houses don't directly front this road, but there are intersections with housing clusters every 1/4 mile or so, with cars and pedestrians crossing at uncontrolled intersections. Additionally, the bike lanes end before the school complex, then start again, then end before the shopping strip. Presumably to leave space for more turning lanes. But, really kills the purpose of the bike lanes since they don't go to the two places you'd want to visit!

And another... https://www.google.com/maps/@38.928914,-77.3522244,3a,75y,15...

Sidewalk on one side, so anybody living on the south has to cross a wide road. Unmarked parking on both sides. Bike lanes come and go (usually turning in "sharrows"). If I were king, I'd remove the "free" curb-side parking and put in proper protected bike lanes.

> I'm guessing streets like the one you share are narrow enough that cars don't usually try going 50mph?

No, generally it works reasonably well. Everyone understands it's a small narrow street and that you need to share. Well, most people anyway. But small footpaths are definitely a downside, and unfortunately also without an easy fix in many cases.

> floppy bollards

The technical term near me seems to be something like "delineator posts" (or just "orange posts" after the colouring) and I think that's pretty reasonable. As you say, they don't provide any protection against a car or truck, but they do signal where not to be a bit better.

flex posts

oh yeah, that's it!

Ironically, the UK already does quite a bit better than the USA in pedestrian safety, despite having much more history of existing built environment.

Or actually, it's perhaps not ironic, it's perhaps because of the limitations of the existing built environment in the UK, which prevented doing what has been done in many parts of the USA -- optimize for car speed over pedestrian safety.

While vehicles partially on the sidewalk are a nuisance, they do provide a barrier between pedestrians and vehicles, and do have a traffic calming effect by narrowing the travel lane.

And they're excellent barriers for preventing people in wheelchairs or using walkers to get through at all.

That's why you have road markings (e.g. double / broken-single yellow line) to prohibit parking in front of curb cuts. Since curb cuts are frequently-spaced, it's not too hard to find a gap.

In my experience people don't care about those markings at all. They'll park anywhere the car can physically fit into that won't unreasonably block other car traffic (and sometimes even then ...).

Vehicles partially on a sidewalk probably shouldn't be surprised if they are found with broken headlights, taillights and scratched paint.

In the places where this practice is common, it is also accepted.

Not true in Taiwan, nearly every sidewalk is overflowing with cars and scooters illegally parked. I started closing mirrors and opening windshield wipers on cars that do this to try to get the zeitgeist moving and someone threatened to kill me for it recently.

“Accepted” is a generality. There are individuals with beliefs counter to the norm in every city.

I'm willing to pay taxes for roads, I'm increasingly not cool with paying taxes for parking.

If the space for the road is too small for one lane each way plus parallel parking and ample sidewalk and pedestrian safety. The order of operations for determining what should be build it is : Sidewalks, then if there is room for a road - pedestrian safety, then a single lane road (one way) then a two way road, then we can discuss street parking.

Let's not forget cycling infrastructure and public transit as well. We should prioritize the means of transportation that are most beneficial to society and most equitable first, then if there is room we can make some allowances for energy inefficient traffic-congesting air/noise polluting motor vehicles.

If your roadway is designed so that the average driver only feels comfortable going about 30 km/h / 20 mph, you don't really need to have separate cycle lanes because bikes can match car speed.

30 km/h is like 10 km/h too fast for a cyclist to comfortably match, unless we restrict mobility only to people for whom cycling is a lifestyle.

Yeah standard E-Bikes (without a registration/license plate) are limited to 25km/h here, even with the electronic assist the car is going faster.

Correct, and same with e-scooters over where I live, which is how I know that most cyclists ride at about 20 km/h or less - by reading the speedometer while matching speed with a cyclist in front of me.

the post is talking about the US, where the roads are absolutely massive and dangerous because they are built to Interstate standards and then posted for 40MPH and have left turns everywhere.

the road diet is pretty common in the US where roads are extremely wide and plagued by speeding, and where the local political will allows realigning priorities towards safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet

More bollards on intersection corners (which is the specific intervention the article author is saying they want first and foremost) wouldn't interfere with that though, they're usually double yellow lined already.

In fact, it strikes me that "places where you shouldn't try and park a car because your car would probably be hit by a car" would make a pretty decent heuristic for places to start.

> In fact, it strikes me that "places where you shouldn't try and park a car because your car would probably be hit by a car" would make a pretty decent heuristic for places to start.

Spot on. I'd LOVE to start with bollards, here.

(author of the post. You're picking up exactly what I'm saying. TY.)

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