lining the streets with steel

[mindstalk]

On Strong Towns Facebook, there's discussion of breakaway light poles (so if a driver crashes into one, the pole breaks and car and pole keep moving on to any nearby pedestrians), vs. ones that would stand firm and act as protective bollards. I of course advocate for the latter. A driver objected "what about someone standing 3 feet further down? Should we just line the roads with impenetrable steel?" as if that was ridiculous and unthinkable.

Well, guess what. Lining fast roads with railings or bollards or hard planters is pretty common in Japan, e.g. 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8.

It's not perfect; there are often breaks for driveways, or just because, but far more often than not, there's both distance and barrier in between the cars and pedestrians.

Though, after a couple random drops into Nagoya and Sapporo, it may be that such barriers are more of a Tokyo and Osaka thing than a Japan thing; this place in Sapporo looks like any American stroad.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Well, and there's also the fact that poles tend to be at intersections, i.e. places where pedestrians stop and gather as they wait for the light to change/traffic to break so they can cross, and also places where cars accidents are more likely because cars are trying to turn and do more complex navigation than just staying in their lane. So if you're only going to have them in some places, they should be at intersections!

The other thing is speed. Severity of injury risk starts going up DRAMATICALLY if the car is going more than about 20 miles per hour. If it's a neighborhood street and the cars should only be going 20, that's a lot lower danger for pedestrians than if the cars are going 40 mph--or 60.