Street safety is a topic that has received a lot of attention over the last few years, and for good reason. The number of people who die from car crashes has risen dramatically over the past decade. But there are ways to make streets safer for everyone—including pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and public transportation users—and traffic engineering is one way we can do this.
But why is traffic engineering Sydney so important in creating safer streets? And why should you prioritize it? Let’s take a look at some facts about transportation safety and explore how they might impact your city’s efforts to improve street safety!
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Leading Cause of Injuries and Deaths
Traffic engineering is the process of designing and managing the movement of people and goods on roads, rails, airways, and waterways. It’s a subdiscipline of civil engineering that focuses on optimizing traffic flow within a transport network so as to advance transportation safety, efficiency, and mobility.
Traffic engineers are responsible for improving road design in ways that lessen crashes or make them less likely to occur. This can include anything from adjusting intersections so they’re more visible or adding sidewalks where there were none before. Traffic engineers also oversee construction projects that involve major changes to roadways (such as when new lanes are added).
Reducing the Speed Limit
- Reduce the speed limit to 25 mph.
- Reduce the speed limit to 20 mph.
- Reduce the speed limit to 15 mph.
- Reduce the speed limit to 10 mph.
Reallocating Space in Streets
The most common solution is to remove traffic from the street. This can be done by simply making one or more lanes into parking spaces, or reallocating space from the roadway to the sidewalk. Sometimes it’s as simple as removing a single lane of traffic and adding a bike lane, which narrows the space for cars so that drivers have less room to drive fast. Reducing speed limits can also help slow down speeding cars that would otherwise make streets feel unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists. Other options include reducing the number of lanes available to cars in favor of increasing crosswalk size, intersection length, and median width—all factors that will affect how long it takes for someone to cross a street safely (or not).
Roadway Design
- Traffic calming
- Pedestrian refuge islands
- Curbside parking
- Reduced lane widths
- Slower vehicle speeds
- Bump outs (or speed tables)
- Curb extensions at intersections to slow-turning vehicles.
These are all examples of roadway design features that make the street safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike by reducing speeds and encouraging more cautious behavior.
Integration of Technology
Technology can be used to improve traffic flow and safety. In this example, the traffic lights are synchronized with each other, which means that cars going through one intersection will stop at the same time as cars going through another intersection up ahead.
This allows traffic to move more quickly because it eliminates stop-and-go driving (which causes accidents) and also improves air quality by reducing emissions from idling vehicles.
Conclusion
Ultimately, traffic safety is a wide-ranging issue. It’s important to remember that there are many strategies at our disposal when it comes to improving safety in our communities. We have the power to make changes—and that means we also have the responsibility to act on those changes. Traffic engineering Sydney plays a central role in making these improvements happen, but it can only do so much on its own.
