Is a Road Diet a Safe Diet?

Road diets are catching on in some communities. No, they are not another "low-carb" fad. A Road diet is the conversion of a four-lane roadway into a two-lane road that will accommodate other modes (such as biking and walking) and provide better accessibility to adjacent developments.

It comes as no surprise when some traffic engineers become hesitant with plans to restrict the flow of traffic since they are especially concerned with safety. And they should be!  No traffic engineer in their right mind would recommend a solution that would put lives at greater risk. However, it appears obvious that a road diet would help reduce vehicle vs. pedestrian and vehicle vs. bicycle conflicts. But what about vehicle to vehicle crashes?

While thumbing through a recent edition of ITE Journal I found a link to this article that presents the results of a study on the effects of road diets on crashes and injuries. The study looked at sites in cities such as San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle. Basically the study concluded that road diets for the selected sites resulted in a reduction of crashes by 6 percent or less although there was no difference in crash severity.

Now I'm not suggesting that every urban street to be thinned for the sake of providing multi-modal transportation. Even this study explained that road diets with average daily traffic (ADT) above 20,000 will result in a greater risk of increasing congestion to the point of diverting traffic to alternate routes.

Nevertheless this effort of studying the safety aspects of road diets has led to positive results, so that we may continue to cut out the trans fats.

Comments

[gaela]

har har, trans fats!