January 1, 2005 Go slower to move quicker. In praise of Hans Monderman

Following article was found here.

Modern city planning stems from the late 20s, and from the very improbable place of Radburn, New Jersey. In 1929, Radburn was "a town for the motor age."
Basically, what they did in Radburn was to segregate cars and people. Flow of traffic was deemed important, and to ensure this flow, cars were given right of way. This was based upon a very rational conclusion: cars hurt people a lot more than people can hurt cars.

The conclusions that resulted from the total segregation in Radburn were adopted across the world. The result: wide rivers of cars, that made metropolitan areas impassable and inaccessible to pedestrians.

The mobility of cars also made it possible to develop suburban areas, using the commute to bring people back and forth to work, which usually took place in the downtown areas.

In the 21st Century, people don't have to go to work - work can come to them. Moreover, cities have ended up with downtown zones that are abandoned, dead and usually not safe after dark. Why did that happen? Because after normal hours of work, these areas were no longer in use, the properties in the area just locked up, and all that moved was yesterday's newspaper pushed by the morning wind.

Fortunately, a few planners decided to question the basic assumption that cars and people should be segregated. One of the prophets of this movement is Hans Monderman of the Netherlands. His thoughts about traffic control were, of course, initially ridiculed. Now they are imitated all over the world. Monderman's basic assumptions: cars and people should be made to co-exist. The segregationary policy should be abandoned. All areas belong to people first, and cars second.

He states that we have created a sectored off highly regulated fast world for cars, a world that is hostile to people, and that people have been forced to retreat into small slow-world islands where they can be themselves. He is convinced that this is bad planning, and that we must turn wherever people live into slow-world habitats.

His challenge to rational traffic planning principles? Remove the signs and traffic-control lights. That is lateral thinking of the highest order. No wonder he was laughed at for a long time. That always happens whenever someone challenges an established, basic assumption.

This is that basic assumption: Cars are made to move people from A to B > their quick and efficient movement has priority > signs and traffic controls and multi-lane roads ensure the quick and efficient movement of cars.

However, Monderman wasn't seeing quick and efficient motion, he was seeing stop/go/slow-down/speed-up/stop.

Think of whenever you've stopped for a red light, in the middle of the night, in a city. No cars in front of you, no cars behind, no cars to either side of you. And you're drumming away time as you are waiting for the light to change from red to green. Monderman was seeing variations of that all day: enforced pauses where there was no need for them. He posited that congestion, traffic jams and rush-hour could be alleviated if not eliminated by taking away enforced flow-control. He also stated that traffic should be slowed down, in order to have it be able to move quicker. (Another wonderful lateral insight). The trouble was that traffic was moving so fast that people didn't dare interact with cars unless the river of cars was stopped by a red light. By slowing down traffic, cars and pedestrians could interact.

Leave the control to the people using the roads, he said, both drivers and pedestrians. They'll know what to do, they'll be able to sort out their priorities efficiently.

The present system where management results from laws, regulations and police supervision has people disassociating themselves from what is happening outside the car, and leads to drivers not seeing the people they are driving past.
By removing the regulatory cues, signs and controls, drivers are reminded that they are part of the environment they are in, and not just passing through. Monderman wanted to manipulate the lay-out of roads, the surrounding architecture and the width of roads, to regulate speed where slower speeds were required.

Monderman was told he was crazy, and that his ideas would increase traffic accidents between people and cars. But he was allowed to conduct a few trials, in the Netherlands. The results have revolutionized traffic control, and have also reduced traffic fatalities significantly.

Ever wondered why roundabouts are turning up everywhere? That's Monderman. The traffic-light controlled intersections were flow-inhibiting, he said, remove them and replace them with roundabouts. Take away signs, slow down traffic to let it move smoother, design the architecture of the roads and sidewalks so that they provide users with overview and all the information they require. And go from double-lane in both directions to single lane in both directions...

That last insight was considered particularly insane. But Monderman and other traffic planners argued that the wide road-rivers in the middle of towns were forbidding to people - to recover these areas, cars should make way to people.

Note how Monderman has eliminated the curb separating the road from the sidewalk - he claims this makes people drive slower, and when they do, they have eye-contact with pedestrians, which makes them behave more responsibly.

West Palm Beach, in the USA, has adopted many of his principles, and developed some of its own. The result: the property values in an area previously devoured by cars, and dead at night, have risen dramatically, as roads were made narrower and people and shops recovered the dead-zone. And traffic flow all over the world is running smoother, with an overall faster speed from A to B than with the older stop/go/stop method.

Monderman had his insight the day he realized that "every road tells a story, it's just that most roads tell the story poorly, or tell the wrong story." This gave him an amazing lateral insight: Take away almost all signs and controls, to make traffic safer and flow smoother. Let drivers and pedestrians become one with a common story.

Have you questioned any basic assumptions lately?

(Hans Monderman's Powerpoint presentation on the topic is to be located at this link.)