Creating safer streets: Combining traffic-calming measures, cycle-friendly design, and landscaping.
Creating safer streets is a priority for Woods. New Zealand has a history of car-dominated environments - congested roads, speeding issues - our roads are often not amenable for non-car users. We’ve adopted Vision Zero - a vision for Aotearoa New Zealand where there are no deaths or serious injuries caused by traffic incidents and our road system improves people’s health and well-being, and creates places and spaces we love.
We work together with Auckland Transport and NZTA - Waka Kotahi to ensure the planning and engineering of new roads and spaces align with this vision. Creating safer roads and more pleasing spaces must be an integrated approach. From day one of the initial development, the intention has to be set to consider road design from an engineering perspective, and built-environment and land use design from a planning perspective to enhance traffic safety and sustainability. This allows us to create subtle changes in the physical environment that can change drivers’ behaviour.
Whether it is looking at road curve radiuses and distances or the use of contrasting materials to create a rumble surface, these traffic calming elements cause road-users to make changes to their driving behaviours. Traditionally, this would have been the addition of speed bumps along a street but we now use an approach of combining elements together. A raised table creates a gentle pinch point while a planted median creates a space for pedestrians to cross. These are much more pleasant traffic calming measures; no one likes speed bumps.
Creating a safer street environment for users to walk or cycle in also creates a more pleasant experience; it’s a virtuous cycle. During Covid-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown, we saw this revelation/ Young people felt safe riding on the roads or in parks that have banned vehicles. People of all ages started enjoying going out for walks because there were no cars, it was a more pleasing and safer environment. Everyone realised that cars actually take up a lot of space.
We’ve seen in European countries that the more cycle connections there are throughout a city, the more people will use the cycle amenities. Unfortunately, we have seen kneejerk reactions to cycleways in Auckland - suggestions we have an over-provision of cycle amenities because they have low usage. However, in some places such as Christchurch, the usage is a lot higher.
The landscaping and maturity of street trees can also have a huge impact on creating a pleasant environment, increasing value, and influencing people to get out of their cars and cycle or walk locally. Research has also shown that increasing the number of street trees can create traffic calming effects, reducing drivers’ speeds.
Sometimes conflicts can arise over the number of street trees to include in a new road network as service providers prefer to limit landscaping to reduce future maintenance costs. Auckland Transport provides a lot of guidance here to quantify the cover while urban designers play a role in negotiating between the parties. Sometimes we have to balance the degree of traffic calming measures with the level of maintenance it will require. For example, fully landscaped berms vs grass berms.
Most of our work at Woods focuses on large greenfield developments, however, historical road environments are known to encourage speed. Roads were traditionally designed to be very wide which encourages drivers to accelerate. Traffic calming elements can sometimes be retro-fitted into existing street networks where conditions allow, such as reducing the lane width, adding speed cushions and raised tables, or tightening up the curve radius or curve extension.
Currently, our LEAD Alliance team are working extensively on retrofitting the existing street network in a former state housing area. The aim for the Kāinga Ora suburban redevelopment is 30km/h speed design. Drivers are currently travelling through at 60km/h so the challenge is to implement subtle changes to bring that down. Whether that is bringing landscaping into the streets or working with engineers on the design and construction.
We can’t alter the mindset of New Zealand’s driving culture, but we can change the physical environment that influences their driving.