Street Smart by Samuel I. Schwartz

Author:Samuel I. Schwartz [Schwartz, Samuel I.; Rose, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610395656
Publisher: PublicAffairs

a For readers too young to have more than a vague familiarity with the phrase “something’s happening here,” it comes from the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” which commemorates the 1966 curfew riots on one of the most walkable, and famous, streets in all of Los Angeles: the Sunset Strip.

b The naysayers predicted an increase in bike collisions. They actually declined, despite a 144 percent increase in bicycle riding on the street.

c It’s actually a literal translation of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung, which is evidence for the European origins of both the term and most traffic-calming measures themselves.

d Everything that goes around, comes around. Most of those lines follow routes once taken by the Pacific Electric Red Car and LA Railway Yellow Car streetcars, which were purchased and closed down in the Los Angeles version of the National City Lines conspiracy.

e Our work on the strategic plan wasn’t exclusively devoted to walkability. The plan also proposed improving the city’s use of Transportation Demand Management computer systems; transformation in the city’s systems for truck freight management, including designated routes and parking for trucks; and an advanced modeling simulation system for special events. However, all of them were intended to improve the safety and appeal of the city’s streets.

f It could be that a liking for pedestrian-friendly streetscapes is a heritable characteristic—except, of course, that just about everywhere we build streets that are as friendly to walkers as they are to cars, people embrace them, no matter where their grandparents came from.

g New York’s success story is one worth spreading, which is why Karen founded Dr. Karen Lee Health+Built Environment Consulting, which advises local and state governments and other organizations on using environmental interventions and policies to address the global epidemics of obesity and chronic disease. See www.drkarenlee.com.

h The technical term for the space visible from a given point is the isovist. You have now learned your word for the day.

i The term is a little imprecise, but true BRT systems are distinguished from traditional bus lines when they feature some or all of the following: dedicated right-of-way, onboard fare collection, and priority at signaled intersections. In the best of them, stations are placed in the middle of the roadway rather than at the curbsides, and have raised platforms, level with the bus floors.

j A stretch? Agreed. But kayaking is certainly transportation, and definitely muscle-powered.

k Yup: the same couple who inspired the original Cheaper by the Dozen.

l The so-called fundamental equation (sometimes the fundamental diagram) for traffic flow is usually expressed as f=s/a where f is the volume of pedestrians per square foot, s is their average speed, and a is the area used by the pedestrians within the traffic stream.

m Engineers who are hired to figure out how much space is needed in the real world often use a different model, the time-space method, in which the supply of time and space is divided by the time/space demand, that is, the total number of pedestrians using the space—for walking,

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