Car Fat, People Skinny

A lot of people are grappling with how to get traffic flowing in their community. Solutions often include building new lanes or new roads to make more space for cars. But truth be told, cars are fat and people are skinny and in the world of transportation vehicles, skinny really is better. You get more people moving per mile of pavement.

Since we don’t want to completely pave paradise we have to figure out how to move the most people on the roads we already have.

Cars in an all too familiar formation…

People surrounded by the space their cars take up…

People on a bus…

People on foot and on bikes.

These pictures show just how much room our cars take up on the road. When people take the bus, walk or bike they take up much less space so the street is not congested. If we are trying to relieve rush hour traffic, we might consider if the goal is to get the people to their workplace or their cars to the workplace. If our goal is simply getting people where they want to go, we have a lot more desirable options, in terms of reducing congestion and preserving the quality of our neighborhoods.

Images:

Fehr & Peers Transportation Consultants