How Safer Streets Can Thwart Terrorists

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/terrorism-transportation-infrastructure.html

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Last May, a motorist drove through a crowd in Times Square, killing one and injuring dozens. Many more could have been hurt had his car not slammed into the three-foot-high steel bollards guarding the pedestrian plaza there.

Unfortunately, no bollards were around to stop the monstrous attack this week by a driver speeding down the Hudson River Greenway bicycle path, the most recent in an increasingly common spate of terrorists’ ramming vehicles into crowds of people. Nothing stood in his truck’s way as he turned off the West Side Highway onto the adjacent, easily accessible and quite popular bike path.

The design of urban transportation infrastructure is defective: It is amplifying the impact of these vehicular ramming attacks. Streets typically lack the protections available in Times Square, and as a consequence, it is horrifically easy for a motorist to kill pedestrians, whether he is a self-described terrorist, a drunken driver or simply someone who isn’t paying enough attention at the wheel.

Last year, an average of 16 pedestrians — twice as many as were killed in the Tuesday attack — were mowed down daily on America’s roadways, adding up to 6,000 deaths. Since 2002, more than 2,300 pedestrians and hundreds of cyclists have been killed, and tens of thousands have been injured, by motorists in New York City, America’s supposedly most walkable city. Many of the victims were crossing the street legally as cars blasted through red lights. Some were standing on the sidewalk minding their own business. Others were killed accidentally by cars driven by their own kin.

Malevolent people will always be able to inflict damage in whatever way they find. Yet deliberate attacks do not have to be as common, nor as severe, as we’ve experienced lately. We can do a lot more to make it safe to walk and bike.

The good news is that we’ve already developed some approaches that work to prevent everyday crashes — approaches that can also curb the ability of terrorists to use vehicles as a weapon. Cities designed for pedestrians and cyclists make it more difficult for cars to intentionally, or accidentally, leave their rights of way.

In Bordeaux, France, decades of municipal policies have transformed a city center once dominated by parking lots and traffic into a paradise of walking paths and plazas. Pedestrians, cyclists and tramways have full command of most streets, which are now safe and quiet while hosting a diverse array of businesses and shops. Security posts, which are retractable when necessary, prevent cars from entering.

Copenhagen created dedicated cycleways fully separated from roads to allow bikers faster commuting while protecting them from automobiles. Cities like Tokyo and Toronto have narrowed lanes to slow traffic. And London has installed bollards to keep people out of harm’s way.

In 2015, the Netherlands, which has twice the population of New York City, had just 60 pedestrian fatalities — about one-fifth New York City’s rate — and its road fatalities have declined sixfold since the 1970s. This success is the result of decades of political action to design more walkable and bikeable places where it is more difficult to use automobiles to kill. The charming and safe streets of Amsterdam are a result of intentional policy, not an accident stemming from cultural difference.

The side effects of a pedestrian-focused strategy are overwhelmingly positive, even setting aside the lowered potential for death. Air quality improves, people exercise more, neighborhood business expands. It might become a bit more difficult to drive around, but that’s a worthwhile compromise to make.

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has committed his administration to Vision Zero, a plan whose goal is to eliminate road deaths. His team, and the previous Bloomberg administration, have made admirable steps toward dedicating more road space for people rather than cars. They’ve added hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and they’ve created new pedestrian plazas in all five boroughs.

But this week’s attack underscores how urgent it is for the city to take further steps now.

The mayor should reconsider several proposals his administration previously dismissed. He should eliminate cars from largely pedestrian-dominated places, such as 32nd Street near Penn Station, and narrow lanes to slow cars elsewhere. He should speed up his efforts to widen sidewalks and replace vehicle lanes with dedicated bus routes, much as Transportation Alternatives has suggested in its PeopleWay proposal for 14th Street. He should lead an effort to add bollards wherever possible, without turning public spaces into pedestrian-hostile security theaters like Wall Street has become. And on the Greenway and on other major bike routes, cyclists and pedestrians should be protected from automobiles entering places they’re decidedly not supposed to go.

By redesigning streets, we can protect pedestrians and cyclists from both careless drivers and malicious ones.