The non-profit group Individuals For Bikes lately launched its annual rating of the bike-friendliness of cities. What I discover most fascinating was a dialogue of cities that improved probably the most final 12 months, together with Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah. Town did some main infrastructure enhancements together with the 9 line path alongside an deserted railway and improved bike lanes on main streets. However what actually caught my eye was that the town decreased the pace restrict alongside 420 miles of native roadways from 25 to twenty mph, in an try and decrease pedestrian fatalities ( an area engineer stated “Solely about 4% of the crashes in our metropolis contain bicycles and pedestrians, however they make up greater than 46% of all of the fatalities that we have now right here”). An area advocacy group “candy streets” has pushed for this with the phrase “20 is a lot”. I like this for 2 causes. The primary is that proof exhibits that the probability of a fatality in a collision between a motorized vehicle and a pedestrian or bike owner goes down dramatically as pace limits are lowered. The second is that I keep in mind this being emphasised in a ebook about biking within the Netherlands [1]. Everybody assumes that the bike friendliness of locations like Amsterdam outcomes from good infrastructure, which is certainly a part of the answer. But in addition of nice significance is that pace limits in residential areas are sometimes a lot decrease than within the US, like 15 mph vs. our extra frequent 25. Going from 25 to twenty is a giant step in the appropriate path. I appreciated this remark from a metropolis councilman on the choice: “We as a nation actually have inherited generations of site visitors engineering solely centered on getting automobiles from level A to level B in a short time and never centered on making the streets secure for all modes of transportation.”
References
- Bruntlett, M, and Bruntlett C, Constructing the Biking Metropolis: The Dutch Blueprint for City Vitality, Island Press, 2018.
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