The Flâneur File: Liberty Street (or, How does a Jay walk?)

image courtesy of The City of New York/NYPD

We are constantly exhorted to be ever obedient and mindful of traffic regulations. Be you a pedestrian, driver, bicycler, skateboarder or hot dog vendor you are subject to costly fines or even imprisonment for disobedience of the traffic laws so carefully designed to keep us safe from each other.

But what if there were no traffic laws? No lanes, no signs, no lights, not even sidewalks. Complete chaos, gnashing of teeth, renting of garments and blood flowing freely in the streets, right? Could we really trust our neighbors not to run us over without being expressly told not to? Could you trust yourself to act responsibly and safely? Could you even drive or walk at all without lights to tell you when you are safe and when you are in danger?

A bold and visionary traffic engineer in the Netherlands named Hans Monderman (pictured below simply because this is what Donald Pleasance would look like if he were a traffic engineer in the Netherlands) thinks he knows the answer. A few excerpts from today's New York Times profile of Mr. Monderman follow:

Like a naturalist conducting a tour of the jungle, he led the way to a busy intersection in the center of town, where several odd things immediately became clear. Not only was it virtually naked, stripped of all lights, signs and road markings, but there was no division between road and sidewalk. It was, basically, a bare brick square.

But in spite of the apparently anarchical layout, the traffic, a steady stream of trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, moved along fluidly and easily, as if directed by an invisible conductor. When Mr. Monderman, a traffic engineer and the intersection's proud designer, deliberately failed to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street, the drivers slowed for him. No one honked or shouted rude words out of the window.

"Who has the right of way?" he asked rhetorically. "I don't care. People here have to find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains."

"All those signs are saying to cars, 'This is your space, and we have organized your behavior so that as long as you behave this way, nothing can happen to you, that is the wrong story."

The Drachten intersection is an example of the concept of "shared space," a street where cars and pedestrians are equal, and the design tells the driver what to do.

On a daylong automotive tour of Friesland, he pointed out places he had improved, including a town where he ripped out the sidewalks, signs and crossings and put in brick paving on the central shopping street. An elderly woman crossed slowly in front of him.

"This is social space, so when Grandma is coming, you stop, because that's what normal, courteous human beings do," he said.

"They're treating you like you're a complete idiot, and if people treat you like a complete idiot, you'll act like one."

Recently a group of well-to-do parents asked him to widen the two-lane road leading to their children's school, saying it was too small to accommodate what he derisively calls "their huge cars."

He refused, saying the fault was not with the road, but with the cars. "They can't wait for each other to pass?" he asked. "I wouldn't interfere with the right of people to buy the car they want, but nor should the government have to solve the problems they make with their choices."