Hans Monderman: Traffic Engineer.

[Omnis]

Well, today I found an article today about the late Hans Monderman. Unfortunately, he died of prostate cancer back in January. He was, I guess you could say, an unorthodox (radical) traffic engineer, and I became fascinated by his philosophy. He and his ideas demonstrated that freedom works even when applied to traffic. An obituary found in The Guardian summarizes all of this quite nicely:

The Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who has died from cancer aged 62, inspired and developed a fundamental change in thinking about the relationship between people, places and traffic. Working in the towns and villages of his native Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, in a traditionally conservative and cautious profession, he succeeded in challenging many long-established assumptions about safety and the relationship between pedestrians and traffic. In so doing, he initiated a new approach to the creation of civilised streets and public spaces.

With the impact of traffic on communities and public life now a major concern, Monderman pioneered an approach that respected the driver's common sense and intelligence instead of reliance on signs, road markings, traffic signals and physical barriers. He recognised that increasing control and regulation by the state reduced individual and collective responsibility, and he initiated a fresh understanding of the relationship between streets, traffic and civility.

Basically, in its purest form it is the removal of the separation between public space and vehicle space. It gets rid of stupid signs and signals and instead lets the drivers focus on the situation and the environment. This newly introduced risk factor makes drivers more aware and less likely to speed or drive recklessly.

The article I originally found today is located here and provides a more detailed presentation of his work and his ideas.

However, I did some more searching and stumbled upon a great presentation actually given by Monderman, and I think it's worth the watch if you have plenty of time. This presentation (as an hour-long series of 10-15min. clips), titled Designing Shared Space, can be viewed here.

And, for a shorter series of videos to get the gist of his philosophy, albeit not nearly as well-explained as in Monderman's own presentation, here are a series of 10 YouTube clips:












Just thought I'd share something interesting. Could this be the start of MPTV?

 

[Omnis]

Nothing? Okay, guess I won't bother.

 

[bergauk]

Don't give up too soon. I'll check it out later tonight when I'm on FF and not Chrome. Youtubes being funny right now on Chrome. I think his approach on traffic is pretty cool. Just from what I read it sounds like he has a great idea.

 

[Omnis]

Don't give up too soon. I'll check it out later tonight when I'm on FF and not Chrome. Youtubes being funny right now on Chrome. I think his approach on traffic is pretty cool. Just from what I read it sounds like he has a great idea.

Of course I won't give up. I just wanted to spur some conversation because I'm eager to see what GTP thinks.

 

[Keef]

I think this would work best within small communities. There's already so little cooperation with well-defined rules that I can't see a huge amount of people working together to make something work. Every American has their own ideas about how people should drive, and even when I'm in a group driving to a meet or something none of us can get along very well. But small towns and communities might warm up to it just fine.

But I don't know about all the crazies who want rules dictating how tall your signature is allowed to be. They'd want rules governing the absence of rules and signs telling you there aren't any because they're idiots.

 

[Omnis]

But that's the thing, though. This forces people to be more considerate because for once they're looking after their own asses instead of having a sign do it for them. It reduces fatal accidents almost entirely. Even if you have small accidents, it's okay because (1) nobody's dead, and (2) both people learn from it.

His design has highways and big roads, but everything else is this kind of free road that is built around people. Almost all roads in the states are built for cars, not for people, to the point where they get in the way.

 

[zedextreme8177]

It's definitely well in effect over in these communities.

 

[lbsf1]

I remeber an article on this in Top Gear magazine, he suposedly gained oposition from the blind.

 

[eSZee]

This could never work in most of the US. I think in Chicago and the surrounding areas it wouldn't. I could see this working in Japan.

 

[Omnis]

This could never work in most of the US. I think in Chicago and the surrounding areas it wouldn't. I could see this working in Japan.

I disagree. It would be fantastic for residential roads in all areas. The problem is that it's extremely difficult to retrofit this kind of design when you have developments that did not take into account life within the street. Everything in america is ultra-segregated. That's why urban america is so ugly.

 

[Famine]

This idea infested Ashford in Kent. Since almost everyone in Ashford is psychotic, regardless of whether they're walking, driving or riding a bike, it's had the same effect as installing a sniper on one random day per week.

 

[Philly]

(2) both people learn from it.

I'm curious about this, and I'll be sure to watch some of the videos once I can watch something with sound later. But right now this has me a little bothered. I don't want to learn how to handle an intersection through an accident. An accident shouldn't be a learning experience for something new. Yes, it'll teach you. But there should be an opportunity to learn before the intersection. If that's not there, I don't know how safe I could consider this.

Also, the other thing that you could learn is that everyone else is a complete idiot when they crash into you. If one person doesn't cooperate, the whole thing falls apart.

 

[Omnis]

This idea infested Ashford in Kent. Since almost everyone in Ashford is psychotic, regardless of whether they're walking, driving or riding a bike, it's had the same effect as installing a sniper on one random day per week.

If you say so.