The Life-Sized City Blog

Robert Doisneau - running pedestrians in Paris We recently covered the disturbing and archaeic 85th percentile method and how it is applied for (and by) vehicles. If you thought THAT was fun, you might also enjoy The 15th Percentile. It is frequently used to determine the time between the WALK and DON'T WALK crossing signals -  in other words, how much time the engineers computer models allow for human beings to cross streets. It's not as rooted as a standard as The 85th Percentile, but it is still widespread. In a nutshell, we should be paying more attention to pedestrian crossings, when you consider statistics that say that " 40% of accidents involving pedestrians occur at these intersections ". In Europe, one in four pedestrians die on a crossing . What seems to be the problem? In the U.S., the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) establishes a “normal” pedestrian speed at 1.2 metres per second (m/s), so traffic signal times are set according...

Copenhagen's Lord Mayor, Frank "Le Corbusier" Jensen continues his fight for a car-centric Copenhagen that would make the 1950s proud. What makes matters worse is that the Robert Moses Fan Club that is the Danish Congestion Commission (Trængselskommission) are also using a time machine to travel back to the congested past at the moment. A colleague told us very recently that they are seriously discussing widening the motorways leading into Copenhagen because of the traffic jams. Can you believe that? With all the available knowledge, with all the moves away from motorways around the world, these clowns are tying us to their back bumpers and dragging us into that previous century that exists in their heads. The subject of 30 km/h zones was brought up at the Congestion Commissions discussions. According to Jens Loft Rasmussen, head of the Danish Cycling Federation (DCF) , the room went kind of quiet. Nobody knew quite what to say. In a flash, the proposal was wip...

It's not like we needed any more proof that we live in car-centric cities. When you start scratching just a little below the surface, however, you start to discover that we are not so much citizens in cities but rather a flock of reluctant characters in The Matrix. You discover that we live in cities that are controlled by bizarre and often outdated mathematical theories, models and engineering “solutions” that continue to be used despite the fact that they are of little use to modern cities. One of them is called The 85th Percentile. It's a method that cities all over the planet use to determine speed limits. It's the standard. Nobody questions it. Certainly not the engineers and planners who, for decades, have been served it up and who have swallowed it whole during their studies. Which reminds us of the old traffic engineer joke: Why did the engineer cross the road? Because that's what they did last year. The concept is rather simple: the speed limit of ...

This is a photo from Hong Kong by the photographer Dian Karlina . It really is the textbook example of a very non -liveable city. A city for machines, not pedestrians and cyclists. It reminded me of these photos taken by Robert Doisneau in Paris in the 1960's. Pedestrians dashing like mad to cross the street as the car traffic roars towards them. Thank goodness Paris is changing for the better. Doisneau once said, “It is not easy to catch a pedestrian, it is like a pigeon. It jumps.” When they're running for their lives it certainly isn't any easier.

I've been quietly looking into noise recently. There was an article back in November in a Danish newspaper about the negative effect traffic noise has on the population. A good, informative article stating that 800,000 Danes are exposed to harmful levels of traffic pollution in the form of noise alone. That's about 15% of the population. The article goes on about how very little is being done in Danish cities about reducing traffic noise. 400 million kroner were earmarked by the current government for noise reduction in 2009 but the government only manages the national roads. They have spent money on reducing noise on motorways but it's the municipalities that manage the city streets - along which most people live, 90% of them in fact - and here there is little being done. Shockingly so. What didn't really surprise me was that the article didn't mention anything about speed reduction. It was all about windows. Classic ' ignoring the bull ' talk onc...

As it turns out, I didn't get my christmas wish fulfilled . 30 km/h zone for motor vehicles in Copenhagen. Maybe the package is still in the post, but it isn't looking good here in mid-January. Since wishing for 30 km/h zones - 20 km/h for school zones - there has been a bit of buzz about them. Barcelona is developing more 'Zones 30' based on positive results. A 27% reduction of accidents in one area of the city, for example. Amsterdam has proposed a similar scheme, too and the Dutch Fietsersbond advocates them. The list of cities and towns lowering the speed limits is growing across Europe week by week. In an inspired moment of excellent timing, The British Medical Journal published a paper about the effect of 20 mph traffic zones on road injuries in London. It was written by researchers at... The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine... which is strange, but hey. Effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London, 1986-2006 Results:...