Bad Street Design Kills People

The problem is rampant in states like Florida, which ranks first in the dubious category of pedestrian fatalities. Florida has more than twice the traffic deaths (2,443 versus 1,200) and nearly equal population to New York State.

What’s the difference? Florida is 91 percent urban, which should make it safer -- rural areas where people drive long distances at high speeds are particularly hazardous. But New York has old cities that were originally built without the “safety” benefits of modern traffic engineering. Florida is built around the automobile, and is especially endowed with wide travel lanes -- which are favored by engineers.

Wide lanes are deadly in urban places, as planner Jeff Speck reported in detail last year, because they encourage speeding. Narrow lanes make drivers more cautious—and save lives. Slower traffic allows walking, biking, and other forms of transportation to flourish.

Modern traffic engineering concentrates traffic in a hierarchy of less connected streets and larger blocks. Researchers Garrick and Marshall conducted the definitive study of how that strategy worked on 24 California cities. Half of the cities have smaller blocks and were laid out mostly before 1950. The other half were modern suburbs blessed with wide roads and large blocks and more than three times the traffic fatalities per capita of the older cities. The older cities display triple the walking, four times the transit use, six times the bicycling, and immeasurably more charm.