Posts about Woonerf

Public Spaces

A closed street can be a living street

by Will Handsfield   •   March 30, 2012 2:30 pm

On sunny days, Lafayette Square is filled with people. Tourists snap pictures of the White House behind them. Bicyclists and pedestrians enjoy a space where they, not cars, have the right of way.

Photo by JoshBerglund19 on Flickr.

Although two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue was closed for security reasons, it has become similar to what the Dutch call a woonerf (plural woonerven, which translates roughly to "living street."

A woonerf is a low-speed street where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over drivers. In practice, cars, bikes, and people on foot mix freely. Unlike a standard woonerf, Pennsylvania Avenue doesn't regular drivers, but it has taken on many of the elements of the woonerf. Security needs can also close them at a moment's notice. Therefore, I like to call this a "security woonerf."

Since the mid-1990s, cordoned-off areas have popped up throughout the city. Yet, few of them could be called security woonerven. Could this change?

Public Spaces

Residents want ped and bike Mount Pleasant Street

by David Alpert   •   December 17, 2009 11:41 am

The Mount Pleasant ANC wants to transform Mount Pleasant Street into a "pedestrian encounter zone" and bicycle boulevard.

Photo by the author.

A "pedestrian encounter zone" is also variously called a "woonerf" or "shared space." Cars can drive there, but instead of confining pedestrians to sidewalks and occasional crosswalks, the road design allows and encourages them to walk anywhere in the street.

Often the street itself is raised up to sidewalk level. These are common in Europe. Here's a Swiss example. Paris has most of its smaller market streets configured this way. Upon reaching the zone, cars drive up a small ramp to sidewalk level, then proceed carefully through the area until exiting the zone at the other end. The photo at right shows a Paris street configured this way; Mount Pleasant Street is much wider, and would therefore be less restrictive for cars.

Such a space would also make bicyclists safer by slowing drivers and giving visual cues that the bicyclists belong instead of being "in the way" of speedier travel.

The resolution notes that 40% of neighborhood residents do not own cars, and therefore giving more space to pedestrians would serve more of the potential customers for the street's stores. Instead of being a through street for traffic from west of Rock Creek to Columbia Heights, the street should serve people walking, biking, riding the bus, or driving to shop in Mount Pleasant.

The biggest obstacle to this plan could be federal standards, which probably don't sanction encounter zones/woonerven/shared space. DDOT pays for most street reconstructions with federal money, and therefore has to follow federal standards for those projects. However, creating this zone may not require fully raising the roadbed, though that would be ideal; signs, paint, and some street furniture strategically placed around the road area could make a good start.

Parking

Harvard Square: streets more complete, parking needs work

by David Alpert   •   November 25, 2008 2:34 pm

I stopped to eat in Harvard Square today on the way to my parents' from the Boston airport. Modern thinking on street design has made its impact on the Square. Bike lanes have erupted all over the place since 2000, and the small Palmer Street alley, which runs between the Harvard Coop's two buildings, has become a pedestrian-friendly, woonerf-like "shared space" where pedestrians mix with occasional traffic and loading trucks. Here's the old alley, and this is what it looks like today.

The new Palmer Street, Harvard Square. Reprinted with permission from AntyDiluvian on Flickr.

Not all is rosy for Harvard Square; sadly, the iconic Out of Town News is closing, a harbinger of imminent social collapse.

However, municipal parking is still too cheap. As Greater Greater Mom and I were driving into the Square for lunch, we tried to find parking at the municipal parking lot by the Harvard Square Hotel (price: $2 per hour). Unfortunately, it was full, and private garages charge closer to $20 for two hours. She recommended that if we couldn't find parking, we just ditch the Square and drive on home to eat. She didn't want to drive around for a long time looking for a space.

Fortunately, we found a curbside space (price: $1 per hour), but Cambridge is missing a big opportunity. Greater Greater Mom decided she'd have been willing to pay $4 per hour to be assured of a space to park. Cambridge could be making more money, and drawing in customers who don't want a big hassle to find parking, by charging that much for these municipal spaces. Instad, Cambridge is underpricing their public parking and curbside spaces, missing out on revenue and scaring away potential customers who'll dine elsewhere.

Public Spaces

Slower, messier, safer, better

by David Alpert   •   May 22, 2004 6:51 am

Reading about urban planning it often sounds like the engineers back in the 60s had no clue. They thought it was just great to bulldoze whole neighborhoods to build freeways partly because freeways made people drive faster, thereby reducing the amount of pollution they emit because cars are more efficient at higher speeds. But really it just encourages people to live farther away and drive more, increasing the amount of pollution (and traffic, and sprawl).

However, we still don't know everything today. This Salon article (watching an ad required if you aren't a subscriber) provocatively suggests that reducing devices like traffic lights and painted road lines in cities, stopping trying to keep pedestrians and traffic apart, actually increases both safety and speed. Safety because it forces people to drive slower and use their brains more, and speed because driving continuously around 20 miles an hour isn't worse than sitting at an interminable chain of traffic lights.

That's pretty radical, and I'd like to see more research to back this up before really believing it. But this is the kind of thing we need to experiment with to understand. Europe and especially Scandinavia, always ahead of the US in this kind of thing, is starting to. But it will take a long time for the US to get there.

We still have most state and local Departments of Transportation focused on getting cars to move faster, who still react to congestion by designing a new and larger freeway ramp with more separated movements. It's easy for engineers to believe that faster is more efficient - after all, it's true for most systems. And that's easy for voters to understand. Traffic just always manages to defy common sense expectations.