Comment 101673

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted May 27, 2014 at 09:29:09 in reply to Comment 101665

The key is to ensure the road is designed to make the 85% percentile 30km/h on city streets.

Engineers know how to "retrofit" even wide, fast roads to do this at relatively low cost: add chicanes, crosswalks, parking, narrow painted lanes, planters in the street, bump outs, speed humps etc. There is a big toolbox of options that have all been used for years. City streets should be designed for 30km/h as the 85 percentile speed.

Our freeway speed limit of 100km/h is just bizarre: it is clearly too low and probably should be around 120km/h (or 130km/h reduced to 110km/h in rain or snow as in France) and then enforced rigorously (like in Australia). Currently, even the police drive at around 120km/h, which is 20% over the posted limit. This really does encourage drivers to ignore posted limits. And freeways are designed to be relatively safe at higher speeds: controlled access, barriers between traffic in each direction, no traffic lights, no pedestrians or cyclists.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2014-05-27 09:30:00

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds