Rethinking Our Streets

By Anonymous

 

I heard themes of safety, equity, and reclaiming road space during today’s group presentations and just found this CityLab article about London streets that seemed timely. In “To Rethink the School Run, Get Rid of the Cars”, discusses how London has closed off some streets around schools to create no-car zones during morning and afternoon “school rush” times. The zones are safe places for parents, caretakers, and school children to walk, bike, roll to schools. The streets are closed to most vehicle traffic (with exemptions for families with demonstrated need, transit, emergency vehicles, and delivery vehicles) and enforced by a combo of basic license plate readers and volunteer local residents.

 

I thought this was a creative idea to address a number of issues.

Safety: Children are especially vulnerable on our roadways due to their size and the trend of increasingly larger-sized personal vehicles. They make up an alarming number of pedestrian-vehicle fatalities each year.

Health: Many children and adults don’t get enough physical exercise. “Forcing” people to get out and walk their kids to school is a good way to introduce daily exercise.

Community: Successful implementation of this program relies on neighborhood volunteers. The program introduced a way for more people to connect both to their neighborhood and the people that live near them.

 

This solution to a public health issue of safety has both good and bad equity aspects.

Good: For a few hours of the day, streets are safe for parents, caretakers, and children. This program prioritizes some of our most vulnerable demographic (children) and creates space entirely for their use.

Bad: This doesn’t work for everyone. It works best for families that already live within biking and walking distance of schools. It’s going to have varied results for families that live farther away and for families that rely on using personal vehicles to drop their children off at schools. It doesn’t address any issues of access to transportation to schools that low-income families may have.

 

Would this work in the US? Maybe in some cities. Some drivers might get upset by the inconveniences from temporary street closures, but we need to start looking at ways to prioritize other road users. During this pandemic, we’ve seen how some cities have responded to the decrease in road traffic by reclaiming/re-purposing road space into other uses. In Portland, some restaurants have created outdoor seating areas in the streets, and some neighborhoods have designated streets that are closed to non-local traffic. We should continue to rethink how our streets should be used and find ways to create better spaces for everyone to safely enjoy.

 


Source:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-04/-school-streets-ban-cars-so-kids-can-walk-or-bike?srnd=citylab-transportation

Comments

  1. SymeonDecember 11, 2020 at 7:30 AM

    Hi Ann, thank you for sharing this great article. It sounds like a really interesting proposal. I could actually see this playing out pretty well here in Portland, where it seems like there has been somewhat of a trend towards closing local streets. This also gives me flashbacks to high school. I grew up in a small town where almost everyone drove to school, even though there was obviously the free option of the school bus. Traffic in the morning and afternoon around the school was absolutely horrible, not to mention the parking situation. People just do not like riding buses, and I’m really wondering how we can make that change in our culture.

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