Redesign Arterial Streets for Pedestrians
Definition
Arterial streets, typically multilane thoroughfares designed to speed cars from one destination to another, are often hazardous to people on foot. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign found that 60% of pedestrian deaths in the tri-state region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut took place on arterial roadways.iTri-State Transportation Campaign. Most Dangerous Roads for Walking And How States Can Make Them Safer. January 2010. 2. Redesigning arterial streets for pedestrians involves adapting roadway geometry (including reducing or narrowing travel lanes), traffic-signal plans, and adjacent land uses of multilane thoroughfares to better accommodate non-automobile uses and create a safer, pedestrian-friendly environment.
Guidance
- Interest communities and cities in redesign possibilities with a public visioning meeting, design charette, or design competition
- Work with business improvement districts; since pedestrian-friendly environments see higher retail profits, use funds for street restructuring
- Create mid-block neckdowns and crosswalks
- Create safe crossings with signals or medians
- Narrow roadways wherever traffic volumes and safety allow
- Build pedestrian crossing islands
- Widen medians into transit stops and/or landscape the median
- Widen sidewalks where needed or desired
- Plant street trees to act as a buffer between pedestrians and traffic
- Construct a buffered bicycle path or shareduse greenway
- Consolidate and minimize the number of driveways to reduce turning conflicts
- Program temporary uses in parking lots at offpeak hours
- Create pocket parks in open or vacant space between retail buildings
- Connect pocket parks on one side of the street to the other through crosswalks, midblock chokes, and medians
- Rezone adjacent land uses for denser development