New street design ideas to help cities provide safe mobility and social distancing are presented in … [+]
Large and small cities and towns globally are changing their streets in response to the Covid-19 pandemic with a range of innovations, from closing off traffic to make more room for walking and bicycling to converting sidewalk and street space for outdoor dining.
A new street design guide aims to help local transportation officials across the country and around the world reconfigure and adapt their streets swiftly, easily and efficiently for safe mobility and social distancing.
Streets for Pandemic Response and Recovery was recently released by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), an association of 84 North American cities and transit agencies.
“Transportation and transit agencies around the world are leading the response with bold, creative and rapid steps to reshape their streets, and by using their existing assets differently,” Janette Sadik-Khan, NACTO Chair and principal with Bloomberg Associates, said in a statement. “Adaptive use of streets can lead the global response and recovery to the crisis, keeping people safe and moving while holding cities together.”
The design guide provides up-to-date resources and recommendations for how to reimagine, implement and monitor changes to streets and public spaces. Examples include everything from pop-up bike lanes and pick-up and delivery zones to managing speed and pedestrian crossing areas.
Initially released in late May, the guide has been and will continue to be revised and expanded on a regular basis to reflect emerging needs and approaches that have been most successful. For example, a recent “Streets for Protest” update includes strategies to help cities facilitate and manage safe access to public areas for demonstrations and protests.
The new resource, part of NACTO’s COVID-19 Transportation Response Center, which tracks and shares cities’ emergency response to the pandemic, was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. It was developed by NACTO and the Global Designing Cities Initiative, one of its programs; Bloomberg Associates; Street Plans; and Sam Schwartz Consulting.
“The global pandemic has made public spaces in cities — including streets — all the more valuable,” Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and former Mayor of New York City, said in a statement. “In many places, elected leaders are adapting streets in ways that are helping to promote health and safety. This new resource collects strategies that are working in dozens of cities around the world, and we hope it will help more governments make better use of their streets — both during this crisis, and over the long-term.”
Joseph Barr, director of traffic, parking, and transportation for Cambridge, Mass., applauded the initiative for sharing successful practices that meet the health, economic, and social needs of residents and businesses during the evolving situation.
“This new NACTO resource provides flexible and creative guidance for cities about how to quickly change how our streets work, to allow us to effectively respond to and recover from Covid-19 while remaining responsive to the needs of local communities,” Barr said in a statement, noting that a small city like Cambridge, “can quickly take advantage of the lessons learned in other communities and then tailor solutions for our local needs.”
