Doug Gordon writes:

As the Covid-19 crisis wears on, a surprising tool has emerged in the effort to slow transmission: city streets. The car has long been king in America’s cities, with spacious roadways edged by narrow sidewalks. But with many sidewalks barely large enough for the six feet required for social distancing purposes, urban residents now find themselves struggling to comply with regulations during even a brief grocery trip. Some have started walking in largely traffic-free streets to get a little breathing room. As the number of runners outside surges—partly due to the closure of gyms—and bikes replace transit for some, suddenly many Americans are looking at city planning in a different way.

On April 10, Oakland, California, debuted what it dubbed “Slow Streets.” Closing some areas off for through traffic and urging slow driving to ensure pedestrian and cyclist safety, the city has encouraged walking, cycling, scooting, and playing. The program will eventually expand to 74 miles.

Other cities swiftly followed, including San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York, and Seattle, which called its program “Stay Healthy Streets” in a nod to the public health benefits of time spent outdoors. Even smaller municipalities, such as the Boston suburb of Brookline, quickly widened sidewalks and added bike lanes, using temporary materials and markings to ease residents’ movement.

These interventions merely tweak the streetscape and in most cases are little more than suggestions to road users, rather than a direct transfer of asphalt from drivers to pedestrians and cyclists. They pale before the street transformations in cities elsewhere in the world. Before it went into lockdown in March, the Colombian capital of Bogotá opened 47 miles of temporary bike lanes to prevent the spread of the coronavirus on its popular TransMillenio bus rapid transit system. Earlier this month, Bogotá’s mayor, Claudia López, declared that these temporary lanes would be made permanent. [Continue reading...]