People have commented on my series of street design posts, online and Twitter and in person, with many questions about how to fix existing streets. My focus so far has been on new and reconstructed streets. Obviously fixing existing streets is a critical issue, and I’m not wanting to neglect it, but part of my approach is summed up as “don’t build stupid”, in other words, don’t ever again design or construct a single transportation infrastructure that prioritizes motor vehicle traffic over access and safety for walkers and bicyclists. The best time for better design was 50 years ago, the second best time is today. But the City of Sacramento, and most cities and counties and state agencies, are continuing to build things that are hostile to people walking and bicycling. Traffic engineering is a remarkably regressive profession, sticking with what was once thought to work, even though it never did, and even though it is absolutely clear that it does not meet our needs today. Transportation infrastructure is meant to last 30 to 50 years, and may be in place longer than that, so everything we do wrong today will be around for a long time. We won’t ever have the money to fix everything (a lot of our transportation investment is basically money we’ve flushed down the toilet), and the Vision Zero or Safe Systems approach of identifying and fixing the locations with the highest fatality and severe injury crashes is right.

My thinking about street design has four contexts:

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