I linked to a Wired article asking what was missing in that article. What I found missing is any mention of the impact of trade-off between safety and commute time. Speed is mentioned only in passing and is treated as if it is an unambiguously bad thing.
Here’s an article talking of “slower traffic, fewer accidents, shorter trip times” in the first page. Huh? How are they going to manage to achieve slower traffic and shorter trip times simultaneously? I go on and read through the next two pages. Not a word.
All decisions involve trade-offs. There is a trade-off between safety and speed. If you want to breathlessly talk of how everyone has been doing everything wrong for the past 80 years and completely ignore any talk of the cons of your ideas, you might as well save your breath because all I’ll hear is “pseudo-science”.
Thats very right Ravikiran.
In Pune (the main city area) the number of accidents have gone down over the last few years. The single largest factor being that the traffic has been reduced to a crawl due to the ever increasing vehicles on the road.
I think other than the one line on “slower traffic, shorter trip time” the article doesn’t talk about commute time.
It’s main thrust is how to reduce speed without signs. The main flaw in my opinion is his very goal: to reduce speed. He talks for e.g. of removing lane markers to psychologically reduce the motorist’s speed.
To give this a touchy-feely socialist tinge, he also talks about “interactions” and “eye-contacts” and shiat like that.
The purpose of roads is to have the maximum possible speed (traded off with safety). Not a minimally possible speed. And def. not social interaction.