Jeff Speck

Rule 65: Provide Angle Parking Where Warranted

Angled parking fits more cars without widening streets & calms traffic by requiring careful backing-in. Tucson switched to rear-angle parking & cut crashes from 1/week to 0 over 4 years.

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Rule 65: Provide Angle Parking Where Warranted

Angled parking fits more cars without widening streets & calms traffic by requiring careful backing-in. Tucson switched to rear-angle parking & cut crashes from 1/week to 0 over 4 years.

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Rule 64: Design Parallel Parking Properly

Good parallel parking is 7–8’ wide, ~20’ long, well-marked, slows traffic, & includes pickup zones near corners. Wider spaces encourage speeding; narrower ones keep cars closer to the curb.

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Rule 63: Put Curb Parking Almost Everywhere

Curb parking protects sidewalks, calms traffic, cuts the need for big lots, & the National Trust’s Main St. program says each space adds ~$10K in retail.

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Rule 62: Do Not Use Sharrows as Cycling Facilities

Sharrows mark shared lanes for bikes & cars A University of CO study found bike lanes had the best safety and ridership, while sharrows performed worst—even worse than no markings.

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Rule 61: Build Conventional Bike Lanes Properly

Bike lanes should be 5'–6′ wide. Use buffers if possible. Bright green paint improves visibility. Add bike boxes & crossings at intersections. And prioritize connected networks.

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Rule 60: Use Conventional Bike Lanes Where they Belong

Once standard, conventional (painted) bike lanes are still useful, though protected tracks are safer. Avoid them on big/fast roads; use on narrow streets or to fill network gaps.

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Rule 59: Build Cycle Tracks Properly

Good cycle tracks have 5' lanes each way, a 3' buffer from traffic & are often safer on the left side of one-way streets. Buffers can be paint, curbs, or islands.

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Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97

I grew up with Tom Lehrer on the turntable. If you called his house in Cambridge, you always got a funny recording. Amazing man. If you don’t know him, start with the Varican Rag. Then try National Brotherhood Week.
RIP good sir.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

Rule 58: Build Cycle Tracks

A cycle track is a protected bike lane separated from cars. In Brooklyn, it tripled biking, cut speeding from 75% to 17%, & reduced injury crashes by 63%—with no impact on traffic flow or travel times.

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Rule 57: Build Bicycle Boulevards

A bike blvd looks like a regular street but prioritizes bikes for safer cycling. Place them on calm streets with low speeds, no centerline, bold markings, branded signs & bike-priority intersections.

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Rule 56: Turn Existing Corridors into Bike Paths

Bike paths pay off. In Boulder, homes sell for 32% more. In MA, they sell 3 weeks faster. Delaware study says they add $8.8K. 1 in Damascus, VA draws 130K/year & sparked 30+ businesses.

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Rule 55: Understand Bike Network Function

Many cities wrongly try to help cyclists by adding bike lanes to every street. Great bike networks focus on fewer, low-stress routes by connecting routes using safe, available space.

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Rule 54: Avoid Common Cycling Pitfalls

Use inclusive language showing shared benefits for drivers, cyclists & pedestrians; show cycling gains for drivers; ease collision fears; drop helmet laws; & poll opinion only if scientific.

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Rule 53: Understand That Cycling Follows Investment

Hilly San Francisco bikes 2x more than flat Denver. In Portland (~150 rainy days/year), biking to work is 14x the national average. Terrain and weather aren’t barriers—investment is.

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Rule 52: Justifying Biking Investment

Bike infrastructure brings health, equity, & economic gains. Bike commuters have a 41% lower risk of early death & 40% are low income. Bike projects also create 2x more jobs than road projects.

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Rule 51: Expand the Fire Chief’s Mandate

Rewrite their mandate to prioritize safety over response time. Replace 20-ft clear & curb radii with more precise rules. Don’t keep signals for preemption & size trucks to fit the community.

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Rule 50: Build Slow-Flow and Yield-Flow Streets

Slow-flow streets handle up to 300 peak trips with 8-ft lanes, no centerlines or bike lanes—best for light traffic. Yield-flow uses one 12-ft lane—ideal for local single-family streets.

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Rule 49: Restripe to a 10-Foot Standard

Restripe wide lanes to 10 ft standards to narrow parking to 7 ft to free space. Then use that extra space to:
<5 ft to widen parking
5–7 ft for a bike lane
7 ft for bike lanes or curb parking.

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Rule 48: Adopt a 10-foot Standard for Free Flow Lanes

Many U.S. city lanes are 11 or 12 ft wide—built to highway standards. But lanes over 10 ft increase speeding & crash risk; hence cities should shift to a 10 ft lane standard.

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Rule 47: Limit the Turn Lanes

Place left-turn lanes only at intersections where undue congestion is caused by cars turning left, and make them no longer than the typical rush-hour queue. Generally, avoid the use of right turn lanes.

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Rule 46: Road Diet Your Four Corners

Converting a four-lane street to three (with a center turn lane) doesn’t reduce capacity. Most delays happen at intersections, not mid-block. The center lane cuts stops, shifts, and crashes.

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Rule 45: Cut the Extra Lanes

Streets with under 1,000 peak-hour trips (≈10,000 daily) usually need just 2 lanes. A center turn lane can double capacity. Only near 2,000 peak trips are more than 3 lanes needed.

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Rule 44: Challenge Functional Classification

Dendritic sprawl funnels traffic to a few major roads. Functional classification ranks them by speed and volume. But in urban grids, traffic spreads more evenly, making it ineffective.

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Rule 43: Challenge Level of Service

Level of Service (LOS) grades traffic flow. Engineers aim for LOS A or B, but in walkable areas, slower traffic (LOS D or E) is safer. If used, walkable streets should aim for a target LOS of E.

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Rule 42: Challenge Traffic Studies

Background growth predicts rising traffic. Some studies apply a 2% compounding rate, meaning 50% more traffic over 20 years. These assumptions can easily block proposed street improvements.

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I guess I like flags (and beacons) but I wish the roads were designed narrower and slower!

It can, but mostly if those streets are widened to accept the new traffic.

Rule 41: Revert Multilane One-Ways Properly

When reverting one-way streets to two-way, use proven methods for forks and highway links; weigh two-way benefits against parking/bike tradeoffs; and know phased work raises costs.

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Rule 40: Revert Multilane One-ways to Two-way for Convenience

Emergency responders are often frustrated by one-way streets, which lengthen response times & require long detours when roads are blocked compared to two-way streets.

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