As the Romans Did

I have been flipping through 6,000 Years of Housing by Norbert Schoenauer. Don't let the flat-sounding title scare you - this book is extremely engrossing and has really been making me reconsider the fundamentals of our homes today. I originally bought the book because it is full of detailed house plans for houses stretching back, well, 6,000 years, and those can be pretty hard to find.

One quote I read the other day while going through the chapter on Greek and Roman housing caught my attention:

"Inevitably, Rome experienced traffic congestion. During the reign of Julius Caesar the street network of Rome had already become clogged with traffic. To ease the congestion and the conflict between pedestrian and vehicular movement, Caesar banned most carts from the city streets during daylight hours." (page 128)

Rome spent untold sums building roads to distant provinces, to keep itself politically and economically connected. Even so, its leaders realized that a robust downtown would never survive if it was choked with traffic. 2000 years later, we haven't learned our history and are back in a position where freeways constrict and choke our downtowns. Will we learn from Caesar, or from our modern-day Korean counterparts, and start making cities for people again?

It's the Little Things

This article from Streetsblog shows how simple changes along a street, including bike lanes, bus line improvements and pedestrian safety enhancements, can have dramatic impacts. In fact, the results were synergistic: vehicular incidents fell, buses moved faster, more bikers came, and on Second Avenue, cars actually moved more quickly than before the changes.

Across town at Times Square, air quality is way up (40% decrease in pollutants!) with the Broadway plaza project. Turns out idling cars are bad for humans - who knew????

These images from nearby Herald Square tell the story:









(via here, which provides an excellent analysis, and originally from the NYC DOT)

The change is drastic. On the left, about twenty vehicles occupy the entire space. They hold probably 30-50 occupants. On the right, I'm guessing about two hundred people are actively using the space. And they're spewing out a lot less toxic gases (hopefully... unless they ate at the Burger King at the corner of 34th and Broadway).

Yet even with news articles and spectacular results like these, New York decision makers continue to bend over backwards for cars in Manhattan at the expense of everyone else.