Design Standards for Urban Arterials

Safer Design Standards for Urban Arterials

As mentioned above, in the U.S., urban arterials are especially dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as for drivers. The majority of pedestrian crashes and fatalities take place on arterial streets. The reason is a deadly combination of dense land uses, driveways, pedestrians, stopping transit vehicles, and high-speed, high-volume vehicle traffic. Research shows that typical safety fixes are in fact counterproductive, although few traffic engineers recognize this. For example, researcher Dr. Eric Dumbaugh studied streets with supposed unsafe conditions (narrow lanes, street trees, land uses close to the street, street parking) and concluded:

Current safety objections to the use of livable street treatments are not based on empirical evidence, but are instead the result of a design philosophy that systematically overlooks the real-world operating behavior of road users.

The Congress for the New Urbanism and the Institute of Transportation Engineers collaborated on a breakthrough design manual, Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities. Although some aspects of this treatment are somewhat conventional, the manual succeeds in endorsing known approaches and techniques for making existing or new urban arterial streets safer for all users, in effect making complete streets out of dangerous, incomplete ones.