The non-profit group Other people For Motorcycles not too long ago launched its annual score of the bike-friendliness of towns. What I to find maximum fascinating was once a dialogue of towns that progressed essentially the most closing 12 months, together with Salt Lake Town, Utah. The town did some primary infrastructure enhancements together with the 9 line path alongside an deserted railway and progressed motorcycle lanes on primary streets. However what truly stuck my eye was once that the town lowered the velocity restrict alongside 420 miles of native roadways from 25 to twenty mph, in an try to decrease pedestrian fatalities ( an area engineer mentioned “Best about 4% of the crashes in our town contain bicycles and pedestrians, however they make up greater than 46% of all of the fatalities that we have got right here”). An area advocacy group “candy streets” has driven for this with the word “20 is masses”. I love this for 2 causes. The primary is that proof presentations that the chance of a fatality in a collision between a motor car and a pedestrian or bicycle owner is going down dramatically as pace limits are reduced. The second one is that I consider this being emphasised in a ebook about biking within the Netherlands [1]. Everybody assumes that the motorcycle friendliness of puts like Amsterdam effects from just right infrastructure, which is certainly a part of the answer. But additionally of serious significance is that pace limits in residential spaces are steadily a lot not up to in america, like 15 mph vs. our extra not unusual 25. Going from 25 to twenty is a large step in the precise course. I favored this remark from a town councilman at the determination: “We as a country truly have inherited generations of site visitors engineering handiest interested in getting automobiles from level A to indicate B in no time and now not interested in making the streets protected for all modes of transportation.”
References
- Bruntlett, M, and Bruntlett C, Construction the Biking Town: The Dutch Blueprint for City Power, Island Press, 2018.
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