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<\/a>\nUpdate: <\/a>\nUpdate: Trees make streets safer<\/a> and \nFixing a perfect storm of bad planning and design<\/a>.\n\nEric M. Weiss writes in the Washington Post on 22 March 2009 about\n\nIn Va., Vision of Suburbia at a Crossroads<\/a>:\nTargeting Cul-de-Sacs, Rules Now Require Through Streets in New Subdivisions\n Cul-de-sacs are unsafe and scary:\n \n“The cul-de-sac compensates for roads that are so over-designed that people speed on them,” Duany said. “So instead of dealing with the heart of the problem, they created a Band-Aid, a cul-de-sac.”\n<\/blockquote>\nSo why not deal with the heart of the problem?\nBuild roads that connect to stores and work,\nand design subdivisions that facilitate transportation other than cars.\n\nThe state has decided that all new subdivisions must have through streets linking them with neighboring subdivisions, schools and shopping areas. State officials say the new regulations will improve safety and accessibility and save money: No more single entrances and exits onto clogged secondary roads. Quicker responses by emergency vehicles. Lower road maintenance costs for governments.\n<\/blockquote>\nBanning cul-de-sacs was one of the New York Times Magazine’s\n\n9th Annual Year in Ideas<\/a>,\nbecause it’s safer and less expensive:\n\n\n
\nThe changes come as cash-strapped states and localities can no longer afford the inexorable widening of secondary roads that are overburdened with traffic from the subdivisions, strip malls, schools and office buildings that feed into them. The system forces drivers to enter these traffic-choked roads to go even 50 yards or so to the neighborhood coffeehouse or elementary school. North Carolina and Portland, Ore., are moving on similar fronts.\n<\/blockquote>\nOr, as UGA Prof Dorfman said:<\/a>\n\n
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<\/a>\n\n“sprawling residential growth is a certain ticket to fiscal ruin”\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat to do?\n
\nSo now, Virginia will maintain only new subdivision streets that meet its connectivity, road and sidewalk requirements. That’s a big stick, because unlike in Maryland and most other states, the Transportation Department maintains and plows almost all of Virginia’s roads, including streets with as few as three homes.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe state doesn’t do all that many local roads in Georgia,\nbut counties tend to slavishly follow state road standards.\n
\nThe new requirements also call for roads that are dramatically narrower, 24 feet to 29 feet wide for local streets. Now subdivision streets can be 40 feet wide — wider than three highway lanes — and cars often share the asphalt with baby carriages and joggers. Montgomery County also recently approved new rules for narrower streets. Narrower roads reduce speeds, decrease storm water runoff and save on maintenance costs, officials say.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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<\/a>\nYou mean wider is not safer?<\/a>\nMaybe even slower is safer?<\/a>\n\nIn the Washington suburbs few subjects are as contentious as through traffic. The current system, which has created developments designed to limit cut-through traffic, has made homeowners more afraid of outsiders coming through their development, because the few roads that do connect are often, in Duany’s words, “traffic sewers” filled with speeding commuters.\n
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