If you care about your city, pay attention this Halloween. There's no more effective test of walkable and safe street design than thousands of kids in Elsa and Finn outfits, high on Nerds and the full-size Hershey’s bars from the well-meaning (but ultimately negligent) family on the corner.
Planning nerds, being planning nerds, call this the Trick-or-Treat test. The best and most popular blocks, they argue, are those that allow kids to enjoy their sugar highs without getting hit by a car. That’s especially true because Halloween is a dangerous time for pedestrians. Walkers account for 14 percent of daily crash fatalities, but that share leaps to 28 percent when the costumes come out. And the celebration brings drunk drivers out in force---drinking-related crash fatalities increased by 17 percent on Halloween, compared to a normal day.
Enter design! Residential streets that pass the test contain a potent mix of ped-friendly elements. A dash of sugar, sure, but also sidewalks that keep families away from traffic and cars slow.
Here's our recipe for the perfect Halloween street. Eat your heart out, Rachael.
Keep the kiddos safe with 6- to 12-foot wide pedways, cleanly separated from vehicle traffic. (Curbs, anyone?) Make it even safer---and more delicious---with a buffer zone, with ample space for streetlights, parking, bike racks and bike share systems. Maybe even a teensy parklet, so even wandering ghosties and ghouls can’t get too close to zooming cars.
Wide sidewalks, skinny streets. Research shows that narrow vehicle lanes force drivers to pay better attention to their surroundings and slow the heck down, which cuts down on crashes. Because who can blame someone for tuning out and blasting the pedal when the horizon is wide and interest-free?
Trees are purty and help keep streets cool and fresh. A dusting of them can also slow down drivers by making them think the street is narrower than it is. That slight discomfort means, once again, more paying attention. One Texas-based study found a 46 percent decrease in crash rates on urban arterials with spruced up environmental landscaping. Now watch out for that witch.
If there is one thing walkers like, it’s other walkers. This is the classic, Jane Jacobs-style “eyes on the street”---the best roads have enough mixed businesses and homes to ensure there will always be people around, just hangin’ out.
Oh, and personal experience tells WIRED that mixed use blocks also provide the greatest variety of candy: Butterscotch lozenges from an elderly neighbor, tiny, satisfying peppermints from the corner bodega, mini-Twix from the couple down the block with two kids who still know what’s up.
Spooky is all well and good, but everyone feels safer when they and the vehicles around them can see what’s going on. As always, there’s a way to do this poorly---by, for example, installing extra-white LED lights. The American Medical Association just warned those can do a number on your sleep rhythms, and no candy is worth that.
Connected streets are very helpful for rambling children in search of the Pixie dust hit, allowing them to move easily from neighborhood to neighborhood without attempting to cut through backyards, driveways, and the odd community pond. Engineers Wesley Marshall and Norman Garrick have found grids (and not cul de sacs) reduce collisions with vehicles, too. Oh, they make it easier for residents to walk off their calories. Win-win-win.
Even the likes of Mary Berry is unlikely to know this super-secret Halloween trick, available in only the densest cities. Step one, find an apartment building. Two: Conquer the elevator. Three: Get off on every floor. Four: Demand candy at every door. Okay, so the exercise stuff goes away. But that’s what a holiday’s all about.
