Large Trucks Need Better Street Design
Author’s note: I grew up on a farm around trucks, began driving at age 7 in a '71 GMC picking up bales, and I've tree-planted in areas with wretched logging roads that necessitated big trucks with lift kits to get us to our planting sites. Trust me, I understand that large trucks have their place. But something is happening on our streets that I think we need to address and trucks are a big part of it.
Upset with this piece? Let's talk! —Norm
It’s hard being the driver of a large or oversized pickup truck in my neighborhood these days. Rising fuel prices, insurance rates, and the price of a lift kit make it quite expensive to keep a large truck on the road. The constant sniping from environmentalists, tax nerds, and mustachioed personal finance gurus is a given and the situation is only going to get worse.
I can’t help with any of those problems. You need a large truck and I respect that.
Whether others know it or not, truck owners like you are stressed by the presence of cyclists and pedestrians in the vicinity of your rolling fortresses. So, know this: We want to make your truck-driving experience better on our streets.
How will we accomplish this? By funding great pedestrian and cycling projects in our city!
With fewer opportunities for your truck to clip the handlebar of a cyclist or for your bumper to push a pedestrian under your truck, you and your neighbors will sleep more soundly at night.
The Problem: Our Streets Tempt You to Speed
There are some roads and highways that feel like they are designed especially for big, souped-up pickup trucks. Wide-open spaces, broad shoulders, and endless views—or tight, winding forest roads where only the rough and tough travel. Treacherous dirt roads that repel road graders, minivans, and Kias, but welcome you with open arms.
Your lift kit and custom exhaust system wasn’t added to outperform everyone on the street in front of your house. You need that raw, adrenaline-fueled performance boost when you’re fording creeks and scaling mountains! When you’re at the race track or the truck rally, right?!
However, neighborhood streets are tricky places to navigate for big trucks. The hazards on the street—people walking, rolling, or cycling—are small and emerge when you least expect them to. These streets are even trickier to navigate at speeds of 30 miles per hour and up.
You’re Being Set Up
When it comes to the streets in your community, you feel like you’re being set up in two different ways. You ask yourself:
“Why should I be expected to keep my truck cruising down the streets of my town or neighborhood at a speed of 30 mph when there are small children around?”
“Why would a city design a street that mimics the open road when there are so many hazards out there?”
Yes, This Is a Problem for Everyone
It's not just large trucks that experience this phenomenon. Most motor vehicles are designed for highway speeds in excess of 60 mph and it takes very little effort for them to accelerate from a standstill to 30 mph. However, the route we are going to travel the most is the residential streets in the immediate proximity of our home—a place where all that speed and power is counterproductive.
We have these dueling instincts in our vehicles: To drive safely and to drive quickly. Can you do both? On a highway you can! In a neighborhood, you can’t!
This is the temptation factor that is an underlying cause to the traffic carnage we have been dulled to accept as a consequence of living with cars: We’ve created a network of side streets and quiet neighborhood streets that are designed for vehicles driving in excess of 50 mph.
Neighborhood streets, as they are currently designed, require you to use a counterintuitive restraint. You know you can drive much faster on the wide street you find yourself on but you know you are also putting yourself and others at risk when you do so.
You Know What Makes You Drive Slow
When I worked as a tree planter, we had no issues with speeding when we were on the logging roads. For one, there were no pedestrians or puppies to worry about. For two, the roads were definitely not designed for high speeds and we could only drive as fast as the road conditions allowed.
Street Design Standards Optimized for Large Trucks to Operate Safely
How can we design streets that enable large truck drivers to drive well? The answer is simple: We should make the streets optimized for slow, careful driving.
We want streets which are complex enough to make it instinctively clear that your truck’s regular road speed is not suitable for the neighborhood you’re in.
If you take a look at most of our streets, you’ll see that large trucks operate best on neighborhood streets when we make the following changes:
Square up corner curbs with small tweaks to the curb or a well-placed planter. Currently, rounded corners allow increased cornering speed and decrease the need for braking, but that’s the exact opposite of what we need to see for trucks and other drivers.
Create narrow streets because our brains perceive that they are slow streets and our driving changes accordingly. Move the parked vehicles closer to the center line with a parking line or reclaim parts of the street as a wider sidewalk or cycling lane.
Normalize the spontaneous use of neighborhood streets for hockey, bike jumps, parties, and even protests to create an expectation of other potential users on the streets. This creates an underlying psychological awareness of the need to move carefully whenever you drive in a neighborhood setting.
Allow vehicles to park closer to intersections. Paradoxically, this results in fewer collisions because drivers exercise more caution when their sightlines are more obscured. Rolling stops are one of the factors that decrease safety at intersections for pedestrians and cyclists.
Introduce crosswalks that are at grade with the sidewalk (so-called “raised crosswalks”) to slow vehicles and make pedestrian crossings safer.
Plant a lot more street trees to introduce a feeling of complexity.
Separate slow(er)-moving street users from the main vehicle lanes by giving them dedicated paths, wider sidewalks, and protected bike lanes.
With these improvements to the streetscape, you’ll drive more carefully because you won’t want to damage your running boards on a concrete planter or scrape your custom paint job on an overhanging jacaranda. You’ll feel more engaged at the wheel as you maneuver through a street that is designed to make you pay attention to your surroundings—the same feeling you get when you do a technical climb up a gulley or feel your truck move inch by inch through a mud course.
Change Will Take a Long Time—Let’s Do This Now
Alongside alterations to the physical design of our streets, we know that separate lanes for bicycles and pedestrians in nearly all residential and commercial areas is a necessary improvement.
And to accomplish this lofty and necessary goal, we should prioritize every single pedestrian and cycling project for the sake of our large truck owners!
Parking-protected bike lanes are an interim solution that will make the main roadway marginally narrower while still providing enough room to make your way through town unimpeded. You won’t have to slip past terrified cyclists as often because there will be several thousand pounds of steel and rubber between you and them. Instead, whenever you park, your behemoth will be an impressive protective barrier for pedestrians and cyclists alike who will gratefully glide, stride, and roll past your truck and express thankfulness for its presence.
All it takes is a strip of paint 4–5 feet from the curb up and down our streets to move parked vehicles toward the center of the road a little bit.
(Parking-protected bike lanes in Vancouver, BC. Source: CTV News.)
All Ages and Abilities bike lanes are an even better option to advocate for in your community in order to allow cyclists and other non-motorized street users to move in their own dedicated lanes without being scared off by the presence of large, crushing machines in close proximity.
Even if you never use these lanes, you can rest assured that you will have made a difference in many peoples’ lives by advocating for them.
Vulnerable-Friendly Places Make Us All Better Off
As Strong Towns Member Michael Natelli put it:
This year, Strong Towns is focusing on how you can improve your community in five core campaigns.
The Safe and Productive Streets campaign is one of five campaigns in the 2022 Strong Towns Strategic Plan. We are helping public officials, professionals, citizen advocates, and YOU take back your streets.
You can support the Safe and Productive Streets campaign by becoming a member of the Strong Towns movement and making a donation of any amount.
And for those of you who have already joined the movement, any additional support will allow us to continue to grow the movement and provide support to an ever-growing network of local advocates.
