09-01-2020, 06:07 PM
(08-29-2020, 11:56 AM)jamincan Wrote: Having pedestrians use the street only seems absurd to us because we have already conceded the street to cars so that now every street is an expressway. It's hard to know how you might step that back, though. A first candidate might be to remove sidewalks from cul-de-sac. They're possibly the most natural feature of the N. American urban environment for a woonerf-style treatment.
What worries me about this is that motorists would probably drive on the culs-de-sac the way they do now, that is, too fast. Or rather, enough of them would that removing the sidewalk would feel like an anti-pedestrian move.
Similarly, consider Queen St. just south/west of King. We’ve complained here about the flat curbs and so on. Conceptually, I’d be OK with making that a woonerf, and having cars go through at a walking pace; but that’s not (reliably) what would happen, especially at low-traffic times.
I think woonerfs can still work in some areas; if the combined road is narrow, doesn’t go anywhere (so no through traffic), and has lots of complexity, I think they can work. For example, the proposed conversion of Larch St. north of WLU should work well.
So getting back to the culs-de-sac, I think they need to be significantly redesigned to be narrow and windy (possibly deliberately wiggly), with things like posts with house numbers installed near the edge so that driving at a “driving” speed is guaranteed to cause trouble for the driver. If that were to be done, this might be successful.