[coryrc]

I'm lobbying my city to make it safer to walk to school. But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement. Non-car users are not important in the United States to the only role cities have for managing road design.

"Safe Routes to School" are programs in the US and there's one here in Washington; Seattle has their own partial adoption of this, and I'm hoping to lobby my suburb into adopting it as well.

The school principal won't allow my son to walk home alone because of the traffic, but the traffic is only present because so many parents drive their kids to school.

[graemep]

The article cites the huge drop in children's mobility in England since the 1970s. Planning here pays more attention to making it safer to walk than it did in the 70s. The numbers show it is far safer. We still have that decline. Does that not show it has to be a cultural change in parenting?

[coryrc]

It does seem like it. However, there's the game theory problem/positive feedback loop where each parent who defects and drives their kid makes it more dangerous for all the other kids who are still walking; iterate a few times and everybody has defected and is worse off than before.

Perhaps it was culture, but the above loop only needs cheaper cars and more income, both things present in the 70s as the effects of WWII wore off.

[graemep]

Its far safer to walk than it was in 70s despite more parents driving their kids around but we still have kids walking less. The feedback loop is possible, but its not what is happening.

I think its linked to a general feeling of safety. I live in a village where people feel they know each other etc. and lots of kids walk to school. Kids in cities are statistically as safe, but the atmosphere is different.

[seanmcdirmid]

Seattle here, Ballard is ok but we still do a lot of dumb sh*t because of our car culture. We just aren’t very honest about speed, traffic density, and kid obscuring onstreet parking.

[doctorpangloss]

> But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement.

i don't know how true this is. residents care about the speed of cars. the trend in government is more holistic public land allocation (ie street design) in almost all growing communities.

[coryrc]

Transportation land area is something like 98% for automobiles, it's not like you could trend more to cars.

Here's things our traffic engineer told me:

1. It doesn't matter how fast the fastest cars are going or how many cars go by a certain point, only the 85pct is used in deciding whether to intervene "and that's the same as Shoreline, and Bothell, and Bellevue, and..."

2. A bunch of people will get pissed and raise hell if you dare take away some street parking to make it safer for people actually using the road. (I saw this around 35th Ave NE in Seattle) And they tend to get their way.

3. The whole city's budget for traffic safety is $10k.

4. In the last four years, the traffic safety program has resulted in a new stop sign.

5. Public roads are for everyone who drives and the people in the neighborhood get no say in it until the 85pct speed is more than 5 over the speed limit.

My biggest problem with number one is obviously 250 extra cars driving past my kid walking to school is 25x more dangerous than 10 cars, but because of 5 the city will do nothing to reduce people from all across the district driving through my little neighborhood to take a shortcut. Expect they'll spend some of that $10k buying signs for our yard which say "kids live here". Wow, thanks.