> that doesn't mean that all streets should be maximally employed to reduce that congestion.

It does, actually, because all streets are connected and part of the same network. No matter what philosophy you subscribe to as to what the "goal" of suburban neighborhood planning is, the fact remains that since (almost) all streets are (eventually) connected, and thus the problem of lots of cars being able to drive on streets that you don't want lots of cars on is always going to be prevalent.

A better solution, IMHO, is to borrow an idea from the EPCOT[1] Concept that Walt Disney created...separating what it means to be a "street" into streets/walkways that only pedestrians may travel on, and streets that only cars may travel on. The way EPCOT would have been designed would have limited your ability to park your car very close to where things were congested. Instead, you'd park further away and take the free public transit or walk/bike where you want to go. Cars and supply trucks would always travel underground in a vast network of highways, leaving basically the entire surface of the city looking more like a massive park than a metropolis.

It would have been an incredible leap forward. Sadly, Disney died before his company turned it into "Epcot", just another Disney World theme park.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept)

There's an important difference between streets (paved surfaces within a built-up area) and roads (an improved path connecting two points). They're different things with different purposes. The goal of streets is to enable valuable economic activity between the people and property on it, while the goal of a road is to connect separate economic areas. If you close a street to vehicles, it's still valuable, since you can walk down it to buy groceries. If you close a road to vehicles, it's basically pointless.

Basically, the problem boils down to suburban streets being too hospitable to vehicular traffic. Remove the center dividing line, remove street parking, and narrow the street down to 18 feet wide at most (this provides just enough room for two SUVs side-by-side). Allow redevelopment up to the new desired edge of the street to make it even more visually narrow. Nobody is going to commute through these kinds of streets.

And an alternative for the low-density suburban junk - replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs. Seriously. It's both cheaper and discourages through traffic.

> replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs. Seriously. It's both cheaper and discourages through traffic.

... at the expense of being impassable for road bikes, generating vast clouds of dust (fun for pedestrians), high noise levels (fun for the local residents), being a major pain to plow in the winter, and having the occasional rock spraying from under a tyre damaging paint or smashing someone's windshield.

>replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs

And throws up a lot of dust and needs to be continuously patched and graded for potholes and washboarding. It can also get ripped to shreds by snowplows if the ground isn't hard frozen. (And even then a lot of material can be scraped off if the snowplow operator isn't good.)

Source: Have a gravel driveway and my family has a house on a fairly long private gravel road.

The opposite of this is also a viable option in some cases. Create a shared road space where there is no delineation between sidewalk and roadway and pedestrians maintain right of way. It is a planning solution used in some city centres [1]

I remember watching a programme about how they introduced this on a busy city centre road and weirdly it increased traffic flow while also allowing more pedestrian traffic (presumably because people and cars can move simultaneously).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

Here in Utrecht, The Netherlands, we have something similar. Asphalt that's red in color, usually means "cycling lane". But some roads are completely red, with signs saying "cars are guest users".

"By creating a greater sense of uncertainty and making it unclear who has priority, drivers will reduce their speed." - so un-binary and fascinating.

There's a lot of science behind the idea: http://jalopnik.com/5533260/why-street-signs-make-traffic-mo...

http://thecityfix.com/blog/naked-streets-without-traffic-lig...

http://www.wired.com/2004/12/traffic/

This sounds familiar to the traffic models in some parts of large Asian cities, although more as an organic result of a lack of planning solutions? :P

Writing based on the experience in e.g. Kathmandu's Thamel district, where the same tiny roadways are shared by all pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws and dual-way taxi and moped traffic alike. Traffic signs??

It's a totally different traffic culture to what you're used to in Europe, and it does work in its own way.

>A better solution, IMHO, is to borrow an idea from the EPCOT[1] Concept that Walt Disney created...

Thanks for the link; I'll have to check that out further. I think I've run across documentaries for cities that have similar ideas. I think new development planning should definitely take some of these ideas into account, but we also have to think about what we can do on the margin to ensure the livability of our cities.

>> that doesn't mean that all streets should be maximally employed to reduce that congestion.

>

>It does, actually, because all streets are connected and part of the same network...

Maybe I'm misrepresenting what you are saying, but generally I would think that you don't want maximal utilization of all the paths in a network. If there's a shock to the system (say a major artery is closed down due to some chemical spill) then you want alternate pathways to be available to absorb the unexpected load. Using suburban through-ways in such a case is fine. Having significant amounts of regular traffic going through them is not. Systems need slack and redundancy to be resilient.

Now, will non-residents still use residential through-ways to commute? Indeed, that is fine and can't be totally prevented anyway. But hopefully incentivizing people to use major arteries will apply pressure to improve public transit options (in order to make those arteries more efficient) and will help keep residential streets safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, etc.

edit: fixed formatting

What that means is the problem is going to be pushed to someplace else, normally to a poorer place. If areas of living aren't shouldering equal burden, then some other neighborhoods are shouldering disproportionate burden.

That's the symptom of NIMBY.

If we aren't talking about (1) a new transportation method without the same issues, (2) a somehow substantial decrease in cars, (3) a decline in US population that outpaces growth, then we're probably talking either about how to shoulder the problem equitably, or how to push the problem to another neighborhood so you don't have to suffer.

> What that means is the problem is going to be pushed to someplace else, normally to a poorer place.

So then, do you agree that having high-traffic going through residential neighborhoods is a problem then?

The parent post's position, as far as I can tell[0], was that the claim "high traffic residential streets are a problem" is itself NIMBY. The argument being that since all streets are part of the same network and owned by the local government, all streets are the same and it doesn't matter which ones are put to the purpose of maximizing vehicle throughput.

In this thread I have made two arguments to the contrary:

- low-traffic residential streets can help absorb excess traffic when there is an occasional shock to the system (large numbers of visitors for a holiday, a major through-way is blocked, etc.)

- low-traffic residential streets enable more communal living.

In other words, there are goals other than maximizing the throughput of cars.

Experience tells me these benefits can be had by poor residential areas as well as rich ones. With this in mind, I think it is clear that high traffic residential areas are a problem that should be addressed. You and others have suggested a host of alternative options that should definitely be discussed. If someone just wants the problem to "go away" yet doesn't care or actively resists attempts to solve the problem on a larger level, then I agree that such a person is a NIMBY. I'm not arguing against the suggested solutions. I'm arguing why we need them.

[0]apologies to the parent post if I misrepresented.

don't forget 4) Better urban planning so people don't have to commute in such great numbers / such long distances

In Phoenix, major streets are on about a 1 mile grid. The major streets (mostly) go through and take you wherever you want, they're very fast and optimized for heavier traffic.

The rest of the streets connect to people's homes, they're full of speed bumps and such and while some do go through, it's a slow and twisty road with no certainty unless you know that street (or peer at the GPS) so you'd never take those roads unless you actually wanted to go into that community.

I find that it strikes a pretty good balance between helping people get where they're going and making sure that people don't have tons of cars zooming right past the front door.

I noticed that about Phoenix the first time I went there. I flew in at night, and the regular grid of street lights was beautiful. This was over 30 years ago, and if I remember correctly there was only a single freeway.

In many places the terrain simply won't allow for a regular grid layout. From my home in Minnesota I can't really go straight north, because there are a number of lakes in the way. There are a couple of roads that manage to snake their way through, but it's all fully built up areas that keep their speed limits low and safe.

There's I-10 that cuts through Phoenix east-west, I-70 that is north-south, and then they have built three highway loops that circle the city. The 101 is for the north/west part of the city, the 202 is for the south/east part of the city, and then the 303 is for the north/west part (way out there...).

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Phoenix,+AZ/@33.5083959,-1...

It was pretty nice when I lived there, because getting places using the highway was fast, and then the grid pattern for the rest of it made it incredibly easy to navigate.

Yeah, downtown Phoenix has a thing where alternating east/west streets are one-way, as well, but for the most part, it's easy to get around here and even rush hour isn't that bad compared to some places, but it was designed with heavy traffic in mind, rather than as with older cities where they grew organically.

People travel in great numbers over long distances almost entirely for jobs. People travel in great numbers over long distances because of an imbalance between their pay and local living expenses, like with San Francisco or Palo Alto.

The urban planning that would be necessary to slow down but not stop the rising tide would be one that makes property access closer to egalitarian ideals, so that the San Francisco or Palo Alto worker making $60k can also live there without driving far. Homeowners would rather experience more traffic / a battle with Waze than see property prices drop that much. The egalitarianish access to property is an even worse proposition for them by magnitudes.

5) Not moving bodies when the job can be done by moving bits.

The problem in your case is that the sidewalks were inadequate or nonexistent; the solution then would be to widen them at the expense of the streets, perhaps install more crosswalks, not preventing nonresident drivers from coming through.

There were a number of issues involved, but you point out a major one. However, the street was already quite narrow; sidewalks only could have been added at the expense of private property (and in some cases, the houses were too close to the street for that to be feasible).

It's infrastructure. Why shouldn't it be maximally employed? If it's not used, it's waste. Don't like fast traffic, do what the OP said, and have the city install stop signs or reduce lane width.

The amount of traffic in the street is immaterial if you're walking on the sidewalks like you should be.

I also said this in response to another post, but I thought it would be good to highlight here:

You don't generally want your infrastructure at max load all the time. You pathways that aren't heavily used so that, if the heavily trafficked area becomes blocked, traffic can redirect to the alternate path without becoming a complete mess.

Besides, just because it is not being employed to serve commuter traffic does not mean it is not being employed. As other people have pointed out: kids often play in the streets. I think this is a good thing, and I think making it safe to be out in your street makes it easier to connect with your neighbors helps foster a sense of community.

Putting houses on courts/circles helps with this, because then it eliminates through traffic, but it isn't always possible.