Street Design

Today’s The Daily podcast from The New York Times dives into the design of our streets.

It also addresses a common mistake in the design world of blaming the user. Many folks blame pedestrian deaths on the pedestrian. “They weren’t wearing bright clothes. They didn’t look both ways.” This is particularly troubling when you think back to what populations are being affected by pedestrian deaths—folks on the margins. Homeless and low-income folks rely on public transportation and infrastructure that can be lacking.

We can design our streets to be safe. We can use technology to enforce existing laws to make streets safer. Speed cameras, red light cameras, and also low-tech solutions with hard infrastructure, such as curb bump-outs. Changing street design is hard. Changing folk’s mental models is even harder but is easier when the physical environment first changes. A great example of this is curb cuts. The little ramps at crosswalks with bumps. Dig into the history of those curb cuts, and you see a slow hard fought process.