#main steet

This piece in Fast Company shows how incredibly far we have to go to reorganize a city like Beacon around people instead of cars. Houten, a Dutch city, has based its 'traffic' around safety of pedestrians and bicyclists:

What happens when you build mobility systems entirely around safety? I found out the morning I arrived in Houten, a design experiment set amid the soggy pastures of the Dutch lowlands. I stepped off the train, eyes blurry with an Amsterdam-size hangover, and found a bustling downtown without a car in sight--just throngs of white-haired senior citizens wheeling past on bicycles, their baskets loaded with shopping. I was greeted at Houten’s city hall by the mild-mannered traffic director, Herbert Tiemens, who insisted that we go for a ride. He led me down Houten’s main road, which was not actually a road but a winding path through what looked like a golf course or a soft-edged set from Teletubbies: all lawns and ponds and manicured shrubs. Not a car in sight. We rolled past an elementary school and kindergarten just as the lunch bell rang. Children, some of whom seemed barely out of diapers, poured out, hopped on little pink and blue bicycles, and raced past us, homeward.  “We are quite proud of this,” Tiemens boasted. “In most of the Netherlands, children don’t bike alone to school until they are eight or nine years old. Here they start as young as six.” “Their parents must be terrified,” I said. “There’s nothing to fear. The little ones do not need to cross a single road on their way home.”

I know that the 'realists' reading this are tut-tuting, saying under their breath, 'that will never happen, it's too costly, people don't want to slow down their cars, pedestrians belong on the sidewalks, etc., etc. etc.' 

Yes, and it took decades to get the vote for American women, to stop corporations pouring deadly chemicals into our waterways, or counter CO2-caused climate change.

Oops! That's right, we haven't solved that last one yet: it's likely to take decades. And one of the key factors will be rethinking cities traffic, mass transit, and increased walking and biking.

And we need to start a series of small, affordable, and immediately beneficial activities in Beacon to head in the right direction. 

One simple step would be to drop the speed limit on Main Street down to 15 mph, and add some minimal 'traffic calming' changes to make it obvious to drivers and pedestirans that Main Street is a heavily peopled zone. For example, adding increased sidewalk 'shelfs' on the ends of crosswalks, like this:

This image also shows the sort of signage you'd want to accompany such a calmed street. Imagine this facing west, at the intersection of Cross Street and Main Street in Beacon, indicating to all that Main Street is a 15 mph traffic area, so anyone wanting to motor through town should head over to Verplank or even better, take 9D. Ditto heading east and west at the Teller St/Main Street intersection, and again at the end of Main past the falls.