5 Principles for Creating Safer Streets

"Earlier this month, NYC DOT put out a major new report, Making Safer Streets [PDF], that collects before-and-after data from dozens of street redesigns and distills five key principles to reduce traffic injuries," reports Ben Fried. "It’s an accessible guide to how DOT approaches the task of re-engineering streets for greater safety."

"The DOT team hopes the report will serve as a reference not only for planners and engineers, but for any city resident who cares about street safety and wants to evaluate how streets are functioning and what would make them better," he adds. "It’s written in accessible language and comes in at under 30 pages, with a raft of graphics and photos doing much of the communication."

NYC DOT has organized its recommendations around five key principles:

1. Make the street easy to use
2. Create safety in numbers
3. Make the invisible visible
4. Choose quality over quantity
5. Look beyond the (immediate) problem