To save lives, shift from arterial roads

Arterial roads — especially those with heavy traffic volumes, high speeds, and strip commercial development such as big-box stores — are undermining Americans’ safety. The extent of the danger was investigated recently by Eric Dumbaugh and Wenhao Li of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M.

The researchers’ findings bolster the argument that more of America’s transportation system ought to take the form of relatively narrow roadways lined by sidewalks — the kind of network that enhances public safety. The findings — which are based on a study of traffic accidents in metropolitan San Antonio from 2003 through 2007 — were presented by Dumbaugh during CNU-18 in Atlanta.

Arterial roads — wide roadways designed to carry large volumes of vehicular traffic, faster than on neighborhood streets — are associated with a 14 percent increase in collisions involving two or more vehicles, a 10 percent increase in vehicles running into pedestrians, and 8.4 percent more vehicle-bicyclist crashes, according to Dumbaugh.

The heightened danger, he explained, results from three factors: First, arterial roads encourage faster speeds, partly because they’re so wide. Second, they attract more vehicular traffic. Third, the many driveways

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