Afternoon links: Ideas on the move

by Erik Weber • September 7, 2010 2:35 pm

Image via Fast Co. Design.

Jaywalking no more: Here's a brilliantly simple idea from Korean designer Jae Min Lim: redesigning crosswalks to reflect how pedestrians actually walk. (Fast Co. Design, Rob Pitingolo)

Pay to speed: As the state faces a huge budget crisis, one Nevada gubernatorial candidate is suggesting letting people pay $25 to get a permit to speed for 24 hours. Police think it's a terrible idea. (Consumerist, Joshua D.)

The future of I-95: "The Road Most Traveled," NPR's series on I-95, takes an interesting, if somewhat campy look at using technology to solve traffic problems on east coast's major artery. (NPR, Rob Pitingolo)

Barcelona's experience with LED street lights: GOOD explains how Barcelona, Spain has achieved a 30% energy savings by switching to LED-based streetlights. Apropos considering the skepticism Arlington's announcement last week it would spend stimulus funds on a similar undertaking evoked from readers. (Good Magazine, andrew)

G-affordable housing: Google will try its hand at affordable housing, spending $86 million to start a Low-Income Housing Tax Crdit fund. Hopefully this venture will be more successful than Wave was. (SFGate)

Transit advocacy a decade ago: A 1997 interview with the late Montgomery County Smart Growth advocate Carl Henn, who died in July, shows that we're still fighting many of the same battles more than a decade later. (blip.tv, J.Z.)

Transit strikes in London, Paris: On French and British sides of the English Channel, strikes are crippling the transportation networks of the capitol cities. In London transit workers are protesting lost jobs while broader strikes in France are affecting Paris Metro as well as a SNCF rail service and air traffic. (The Guardian, Telegraph, charlie)

Public health experts missing the point: While numerous public health experts have recognized that traffic deaths are one of the primary killers of Americans, they seem to miss the point about how to tackle the problem. (Streetsblog)

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12 comments

Tags: affordable housing, Arlington, crosswalks, energy, enforcement, Google, I-95, ITS, labor, links, London, Maryland, Montgomery, Nevada, Paris, pedestrian safety, public health, road safety, roads, Smart Growth, speed limits, streetlights, technology, Virginia

Erik Weber has been living car-free in the District since 2009. Hailing from the home of the nation's first Urban Growth Boundary, Erik has been interested in transit since spending summers in Germany as a kid where he rode as many buses, trains and streetcars as he could find. Views expressed here are Erik's alone.

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I have to say the one thing I have learned from reading GGW and internalizing the issues more is street narrowing is great. Best way to slow cars down.

Now putting more lawn furniture, people, bikes, etc on the road isn't going to help. But make secondary streets a lot narrower and I find myself driving slower.

In terms of the LED streetlight, I still say it is a waste:

1. Most Arlington streetlights are NOT run by the county
2. The Barcelona system relied on sensors to turn themselves off, and I'm not sure the Arlington ones could do the same.
3. Barcelona found a 30% cost saving when the targeted a particular district -- not citywide.
4. Electricity costs a lot more in Spain than here
5. Actually, if even they get the sensors, I think having the lights go on and off is even more annoying. I'd rather see them all go off at 2AM, and only stay on if there is an uptick in crime. Of course, that would require someone intelligent at the controls.

by charlie on Sep 7, 2010 2:41 pm

It's not only speeding, but the $25-crime fee market is pretty much untapped. Allowing people to commit non-violent offenses over a 24 hr. period in exchange for a small contribution to the local treasury could be a boon for states. It's time for DC to get in on this action.

by aaa on Sep 7, 2010 2:53 pm

regarding the crosswalk redesign:
Seems like the area where cars aren't allowed is still essentially rectangular (regardless of the stripes), just larger. I wonder if this is any more effective than just enlarging the crosswalk. Kinda like raising the speed limit doesn't usually cut down much on the percentage of traffic speeding; people adjust their behavior to exceed the allowable limit by the amount which they're comfortable.

by Aaron on Sep 7, 2010 3:01 pm

The $25 24 hour pass sounds like the selling of indulgences, replacing the state like church with the state.

Regarding LEDs the Economist has an article regarding their viability indoors, and our failure to consider people's desire for ever more of something.
http://economist.com/node/16886228

by copperred on Sep 7, 2010 3:01 pm

That Economist article is....weird. For starters, the study was conducted by a group of applied physicists, not economists, which is puzzling because economists are the ones who model human behavior.

Several of the other assumptions in the article are never elaborated upon -- is it really safe to assume that LEDs will be 3x as efficient as fluroescent bulbs 30 years from now, or that the real price of electricity will remain the same over that same interval?

Does he consider any backlash against light pollution, or that we're simply running out of unlit spaces to illuminate? Eventually, the demand for lighting plateaus. Also, are the cost savings really going to trigger any sort of consumer response w.r.t leaving the lights on? My gut instinct tells me no.

The coupling of LEDs with motion sensors also changes demand patterns considerably. Although this may cause us to install more lights, the lights won't be on for the same portion of time. LEDs are unique in the lighting world, because they don't require an extra burst of power when they turn on, and can be dimmed by disabling individual diodes, rather than resorting to traditional dimming methods (which aren't even possible with fluorescent and gas-arc lamps).

I don't want to dismiss the study entirely without reading the journal article itself, but that Economist article seems to raise more questions than it answers. I'm still not convinced that LED streetlights are the way to go forward, but that article didn't do anything to convince me otherwise.

by andrew on Sep 7, 2010 4:49 pm

With regard to LED streetlight replacements...

The designer of the replacement LED lighting will need to be very careful about the photometrics of the design. Many roadway lighting designs rely on the overlapping pools of light to achieve the desired lighting level. This is because high pressure sodium or metal halide lights "bleed off" from their focal point, i.e. the center of the light pool is brighter than the outside.

LEDs by their design have a "sharp cutoff" The light is at a uniform intensity across the entire light pool and is dark out side of it. Using some of the LED retrofit fixtures is not as simple as a one to one replacement because the lighting level couldn lower between lights because of this characteristic (no overlap).

All this is saying is that while it can save a goodly sum of money... the details of the lighting design to maintain roadway and sidewalk safety are vitality important and something that cannot be overlooked by a simple swap of lighting fixtures.

by Contrarian on Sep 7, 2010 4:50 pm

I'd also be curious to see how the snow interacts with streetlights. I know that was an issue with the signal LED lights, and I saw a lot of that this winter. Of course, we probably won't have a winter like that for a long time again. It would seem pretty simple to come up with a design that lets snow flake off, or perhaps some sort of coating to stop ice from forming.

by charlie on Sep 7, 2010 5:12 pm

@aaa

Allowing people to commit non-violent offenses over a 24 hr. period in exchange for a small contribution to the local treasury could be a boon for states. It's time for DC to get in on this action.

Why limit it to minor infractions? The Vikings hewed to the weregild system for hundreds of years to great effect.

by oboe on Sep 7, 2010 5:33 pm

@oboe:

Kind of like bringing back blood money? See that would annoy me since it would likely be a standard set rate, regardless of income. Now if you make it a percentage of income or total wealth, then I'd interested. ;-)

by copperred on Sep 7, 2010 5:59 pm

The $25 24 hour pass sounds like the selling of indulgences, replacing the state like church with the state.

Reminds me of the old joke when Montana had a $5 "inefficient use of gas" fine for cars going over 55: Officer: "I stopped you because you were going 90. The fine is $5". Driver: "Here's a $10--no need to stop me on the return trip this afternoon."

by ah on Sep 7, 2010 9:28 pm

Hey! You linked to an article with almost no info. (In consumerist). To get anything useful, I had to click through to Breitbart's site. Some warning please! I don't like the idea of contributing to that guy's page views.

by DavidDuck on Sep 8, 2010 6:57 pm

I think that we should come up with stop lines that also reflect how drivers drive, which would have them protrude into the intersection, especially in the right lane.

I see these crosswalks as an illustration of pedestrian laziness and non-compliance, rather than a superior design. We reject changes that convenience driver laziness; why shouldn't we do the same regarding pedestrians? Cross in the cross-walk. Stop the car before the crosswalk. Everybody in the right place creates safety and efficiency for all.

by ah on Sep 9, 2010 9:34 am