The shift is to talking more about access than mobility, great streets more than “complete streets” and indeed destinations and Placemaking as the best catalysts for growing use and experience for various forms of alternative transportation – not just alternative transportation infrastructure as an end in itself.

The transformation for streets like Flatbush can perhaps best be brought about by looking at their value and potential to support destinations, weather with improved retail, better designed intersections, or more actively managed public spaces and community institutions. For instance, the avenues many institutions like Long Island University, BAM, BPL, Prospect Park Zoo, etc. are indeed there but seriously limited by the design of Flatbush. The many smaller and larger (GAP, Atlantic Ave., etc) intersections of Flatbush are all designed to optimize the experience of cars, rather that the experience of people and communities. Certainly, all along the avenue, the land use, retail design and street life have all been forced to adapt to the traffic environment. If we plan for these destinations, uses and users in mind, we would inevitably come to a very different end. Starting with traffic, on the other hand, is dead end!

The real problem is the value our society puts on streets. Its public, its free, therefore it is not valuable ..

in our economic model we have to make it scarce or very expensive to be valuable, respected etc..

While cities are actually designing streets based Engwicht type ideas in many parts of the world, most notably in Holland and Germany with Hans Monderman as the leader (PPS is doing this in the small City of Lindsay, CA), The principles still apply to NYC and the below mentioned Flatbush Ave.

Like Broadway in Manhattan, Flatbush’s intersections are generally some of the most unfriendly and dangerous in the city, and could potentially be some of the nicest and most livable destinations if conceived as such. If they were designed and managed to support and connect destinations they could look and feel very different.

The paradigm shift as it applies to NYC and these major streets is to think of the street itself as public space and manage it to support the many small and larger destinations it is meant to connect.

While real and perceived pedestrian safety issues are likely the cities greatest blight and deserve infinitely greater attention, making DOT defensive about safety and liability will not ultimately bring about this shift. We need to refocus transportation planning on creating and connecting destinations.

When most neighborhoods are self-sustaining, then traffic is largely a factor of major events and commute-related.

Try this:

Dress up like Merlin in drag, stand the middle of the street and wave your “traffic taming” wand like an oxycontin addled cheeba monkey.

that might help.

When I’m out front on my lawn, I put my arms up to him (and other zip-critters) to indicate “What’s up with that?” (A suprisingly more effective gambit than clear disapprobation.) He sees me, looks sheepish, and slows down.

A stranger? No. He’s the dad of my son’s classmate. He’s the guy who invited me in for a drink on Halloween. He’s a pretty active presence in the neighborhod.

All that personal connection. All the clear messages that he should slow down. And he still doesn’t.

Wait, that’s not true. He once stopped in front of the house to compliment us on the paint job.

People get in their cars to get out of the neighborhood, both in the physical and the psychic sense.

You have to actually read the book!
http://www.pps.org/info/products/Books_Videos/mental_speedbumps

Engwicht says, “safety is maximized when false sense of security is minimized. …Because unless we also make the social life of the street more controlled and predictable we will simply create a false sense of security. …Make our travel environment feel less predictable and we will travel slower.”

Perhaps a follow-up study to TA’s “Traffic’s Human Toll” study (http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/10/06/traffics-human-toll-2/) could look at “Human’s Traffic Toll.“ The TA study replicates in NYC Donald Appleyard’s findings from the 70s in California, that show the volume of the street determines the amount of social life from a number of indicators. Perhaps if we looked at streets with the same capacity in the TA study, that we could see if there is a negative correlation between speed and the social factors uncovered.

What we do need to create is a national ethic of yielding to pedestrians. All cars, trucks and cyclists should face high penalties for “failure to yield”.

Yes, cities still ought to implement traffic calming, and if those things result in more liveable, walkable streets and more street life, THEN his idea of shaking hands to further improve things will come more easily.

But he’s absolutely right in general: in my little, private attempts to make streets safer, I have found, like the old wives tell us, that honey works much, much better than vinegar (because drivers and city officials are indeed often on the same level as “flies”).

“The reason great intersections work is because of the creation of a pedestrian realm where the cars know this. When streets become unsafe, it is almost always when the pedestrian realm does not exist.”

“Most of the great intersections and streets I’ve observed could not be built today. But based on real accident records, they are not more dangerous than currently ‘normally designed’ streets and intersections — and have similar if not higher throughput.”

By the way, Engwicht was one of the fathers of modern traffic calming, but has since largely abandoned what he now considers a “negative” approach to addressing these issues in favor of the these “mental speed bumps.”

Full disclosure – PPS is the US distributor of Mental Speed Bumps.