Daylighting: Make Your Crosswalks Safer

WoW! Never seen anything like this. A plus work guys.

Thank you, Streetfilms, for once again coming through with a great tool. Yours is the visual accomplaniement we needed last Monday when an enthisiastic group of Upper West Side neighbors met to brainstorm together, We all wanted livable streets, and "Daylighting," as one of the easiest alterations to make, was at the top of our list. We plan to make our needs known to Comunity Board #7 and the DOT. Daylighting was a no-brainer for every person that even began to look at our intersections from a pedestian"s vantage.
Particularly for our most vulnerable; the elderly and the young, Daylighting, or perhaps "pedestrian 20/20" (my suggestion for the practice) needs implementing without delay. Reducing the fear-stress of navigating this city, walking or cycling makes for happier people, not to mention saving lives.
We can proceed now with one more tool in our box for demonstation at these gatherings and board meetings thanks to this video.
Mary Beth

Thanks for the ideas and feedback. Keep it coming. One thing I think is so great is that if this became the norm in in busy downtown areas, it would create such a better walking environment.

I'd also like to address the person that emailed me personally to comment that our one shot of a truck parked is not "typical". I actually beg to differ, in fact here in NYC the biggest problems are with trucks and large vans that park right at the end of a street thus really blocking the sight of pedestrians and drivers. I see it every day.

Interesting, Spencer. Maybe "wide-angle views" at intersections? Wide-angle crosswalk views?

Removing parked cars is good for beautification, and that's reason enough to do more of it. And in-street bike parking is the best!

But removing the parked cars as a safety tool? One can currently treat the parked cars as bulb outs of sorts; while waiting to cross the street, stand near the end of the car bumper, not on the curb. The short street crossing benefit of the bulb out is already present.

Instead of aiding safety, removing the car parking without installing a bulb out or bike corral may have the effect of increasing the turning radius available to cars approaching the intersection, thus encouraging speeding. The cars currently parked at the intersection, ugly as they are, have a slight traffic calming effect because they narrow the roadway in the eyes of the motorist.

Muni uses this at some tight corners so that the buses can make their turn. There's a red curb on Ashbury at Haight St, for instance. Of course, there's almost always a car parked in that red zone, what with parking being so scarce in the Haight. I agree that bulb-outs are much more effective than simply "removing" a parking place.

Bike parking on the street next to an intersection? I don't think so!! Our present bike racks are close enough to moving vehicles as it is. The only people that streetcorner bike racks would benefit are scrappers looking for a few more destroyed bikes to cash in.

This makes so much sense, especially the built-out version where drivers can't even be tempted to stand for a minute. The name should be something having to do with increased visibility: HighViz, SuperSight, Clearcorner, Lowrise.

I concur with Chris in Sacramento! This isn't a good idea for safety at all! (unless maybe if they are replaced by bulb-outs with a tight turning radius). This is typical old-fashioned traffic thinking; remove all obstacles, increase sight distances and assume people are idiots driving bumper cars! Even if it is marginally (and i'm not saying it is) safer for the pedestrian crossing directly in front of a car (perpendicular), what about the pedestrian crossing parallel to a car? If this is at a light or stop sign, the car should already be coming to a full stop before turning when people are crossing (doesn't work if they're crossing against the light). It's the people crossing parallel to right turning cars that are the major concern at intersections. Any increase in speed is bad for them.

And people frequently queue up on the asphalt, basically in the street, behind the protection of a parked cars (could be a bulbout). This decreases the effective crossing distance which is huge for pedestrian safety.

Last May DOT undertook some very effective daylighting at one intersection of Riverside Drive and 79th Street in Manhattan. And they did it after I ran into DOT's Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione at a meeting of Community Board 7. I mentioned the problem with the intersection, she asked me to email her, and within weeks she had engineers look at the intersection. DOT agreed with my assessment that two parking spaces be removed from the corner, and they had new signs up a few weeks later. So the lesson, here, is speak up and let DOT know. For dramatic before and after picturs, see my post over at StreetsWiki: http://www.livablestreets.com/projects/dangerous-intersections/79th-street-and-riverside-drive.

Another thought: we get automatic daylighting when there's a fire hydrant at a corner! Take a moment to appreciate the street view the next time you visit a corner with that piece of street furniture. Not only does it improve your experience, it can save lives, and become a play sprinkler in the summers. Oh, yes, of course dogs like them too (is it the competitive hydrant instinct?)

The UK Zebra Crossing was mentioned in the first post. To find an official on-line reference go to the link at http://tinyurl.com/6jbybk and croll down to #19 to see an illustration.
Zebra Crossings, as they are popularly known, were first proposed in parliament by Lord Belisha many decades ago and have been very successful. The flashing round orange lamps marking the crossing are called "Belisha beacons." The zig-zag no-parking zone is an essential element and as is pointed out in this Streetfilms video, provides much improved visibility for pedestrians waiting to cross.
Something to note: if a vehicle operator hits a pedestrian in such a crossing it is treated very seriously by the courts. Also, because of the expense of installation, they are only approved when the combination of ADT [Average Daily Traffic count] plus the number of pedestrians wanting to cross at this location meets minimum criteria. They don't just slap these in whenever pedestrians call for them.
These details are what help to make these crossings effective, in contrast to the minimalist approach in the U.S. where just a couple of parallel painted lines, stop bars, plus sign panels are all that are required and they tend to be overused.

To me, in the graphic at the top, "before" looks way safer than "after."

In "before," the parked cars constrain the moving auto, provide a barrier protection for the pedestrians and reduce the effective crossing distance.

In "after," the peds are much more exposed to the vicissitudes of the approaching motorist.

But, then again, I'm not crazy about bike boxes either :-).

Daylighting intersections is a great idea for not only pedestrians, but motorists and cyclists as well.

By moving the vehicles back from the intersection by approximately one car length, those approaching to cross the intersection have a better view of traffic approaching or at the intersection.

To those who claim that pedestrians can move off the sidewalk and use the parked car as kind of a barrier need to consider that such action may set drivers moving through the intersection for a traffic ticket, depending on how the officer interprets and applies the law. I have seen tickets issued with a pedestrian stepped off the curb mid-block as a driver went by, never mind there wasn't an intersection right there and even had the driver slammed on his brakes, he would have been beyond the pedestrian by the time he came to a stop. Even if such tickets get dismissed in the end, it costs everyone time and money needlessly.

I would prefer to see such daylighting measures include building up a bulb-out or something to provide a physical barrier and discourage parking. As many can attest, open pavement that is not physically blocked off will become a parking spot, even if illegally.

There is one thing to be careful of - done frequently in the car-centric city of Los Angeles. Our DOT daylights parking 30-50+ feet at these intersections, then jams a left turn pocket into the center of the street. A tad more visibility... but it pushes moving cars out to the right, closer to the pedestrians at the corner. This turns a 4-lane road into a 5-lane road at intersections.

This is certainly not what the (excellent) video is advocating... it's just a cautionary note that when you start removing some of the space from parked cars, be careful that space doesn't get reallocated to moving cars.

How 'bout Pedestrian Clearsighting as an alternative term.

How about CMeCU cormer-meaning you can see me I can see you corner.

Yes. In LA, often drivers use the extra open space to cut around cars stopped to make left turns. To prevent that behaviour, this would be a great opportunity to install vegetated bump-outs, preferably with bio-swales to limit their impact on water usage.