Speed is a False Economy
From Carl Honoré’s In Praise of Slowness. Emphasis and notes mine.
On many journeys, speeding will not save any time at all. The spread of synchronized traffic signals means that drivers who flout the speed limit come up against more red lights.¹ Weaving in and out of heavy traffic is often counterproductive, partly because lane speeds are constantly changing. Yet even knowing that speed is a false economy is unlikely to slow people down. The problem with most anti-speeding measures, from radar traps to narrowed roads², is that they rely on coercion… As soon as the coast is clear, they speed up again, sometimes even faster than before.³
1) I see this a lot when I’m biking. Cars zip passed me in a frantic, desperate race to get to the next red light. They often pass dangerously, and then I am right behind them half a block later.
2) While I think traffic calming is a good idea, the “narrowed roads” bit made me think of the proposed “road diet” they are looking into for Madison Ave. If it is successful, traffic on that street will thin out and go slower, but impatient drivers will speed through parallel streets instead.
3) Drivers pass me and gun it. As if to make up for the 5 or 10 seconds they were “stuck” behind me. And then, well, see #1.
A pedestrian hit by a car doing 20 mph stands a 5% chance of dying; at 30 mph that figure jumps to 45%; at 40 mph it is 85%. “We’re all in such a hurry nowadays that we speed in order to save a minute and a half,” [Len Grimshaw] says. “Is it really worth the risk of ruining your life or someone else’s just to arrive ninety seconds earlier?”
And an alternative…
When it comes to making urban areas more liveable, though, learning to obey the speed limit is just the start. As Citta Slow proved, you also have to give less space to the car.¹ To that end, cities everywhere are pedestrianizing roads, laying bicycle lanes, cutting parking, imposing road tolls and even banning traffic outright. Every year, many European cities hold car-free days. Some even empty the streets once a week. Every Friday night, traffic is cleared from swatches of central Paris to make way for an army of in-line skaters. Rome banner traffic for the whole of December 2002 from the fashionable shopping district known as Trident. In 2003, London began charging drivers £5 per day to enter the city centre during weekdays. Overall traffic is down by a fifth, turning the British capital into a much more welcoming place for cyclists and pedestrians. Other major cities are now studying the London charging scheme.
1) An idea that sounds almost unamerican.