In the village of Bauné, drivers confronted a series of crisscrossed white road lines at a main intersection this month, which the mayor argues has made them slow down.
That is actually some weird kind of brilliance. I might argue white paint is a bad color because then it makes people think there’s some weird traffic rule in place - it could also distract people’s eyes from the pedestrians they’re genuinely trying to avoid. Still, the idea is interesting; it ties in with what people had been saying about having drivers naturally enforce speed limits.
I disagree it’s bad design. It may work initially just because it’s unfamiliar and confusing, but once people are used to it, there is still nothing stopping them from speeding again. On top of that they will be speeding through an area of ambiguous rules.
I agree with you, and I am an urbanist working in a small town in France (5000 hab) we thought about using this kind of technique but ultimately for the reasons you mention we back track a bit. For the few test we did, we noticed that paint is never enough (car already does not respect regular paint, a bit on our part in my opinion cause we design it wrong but that another subject). You have to work on why ppl come here by car, how they can use other roads, make this one difficult for non essential uses and make the other modes more convenient. Paint alone can’t do that.
But, with other measures, as a transition step to a long term project asphalt art can be useful. (I mean, I hope so xD we worked on a summer redisign project with light elements, artist event and paint in one of our street. I hope it will work to be the first step of a better project).
That is actually some weird kind of brilliance. I might argue white paint is a bad color because then it makes people think there’s some weird traffic rule in place - it could also distract people’s eyes from the pedestrians they’re genuinely trying to avoid. Still, the idea is interesting; it ties in with what people had been saying about having drivers naturally enforce speed limits.
I disagree it’s bad design. It may work initially just because it’s unfamiliar and confusing, but once people are used to it, there is still nothing stopping them from speeding again. On top of that they will be speeding through an area of ambiguous rules.
I agree with you, and I am an urbanist working in a small town in France (5000 hab) we thought about using this kind of technique but ultimately for the reasons you mention we back track a bit. For the few test we did, we noticed that paint is never enough (car already does not respect regular paint, a bit on our part in my opinion cause we design it wrong but that another subject). You have to work on why ppl come here by car, how they can use other roads, make this one difficult for non essential uses and make the other modes more convenient. Paint alone can’t do that.
But, with other measures, as a transition step to a long term project asphalt art can be useful. (I mean, I hope so xD we worked on a summer redisign project with light elements, artist event and paint in one of our street. I hope it will work to be the first step of a better project).