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Making an intersection unsafe for pedestrians to save seconds for drivers

How the redesign of a street in a walkable college town reflects our broader values for cars over people.

The case highlights how we’ve elevated the value of moving cars quickly at the expense of everything else, even in highly walkable areas. ’s work at Strong Towns and in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer may recognize the priorities of speed and “Traffic Volume” for drivers over that of safety and comfort for pedestrians. The “upgraded” intersection at Lemon and Palm illustrates this mismatch in values.In a neighborhood between parts of a university campus, in one of the most walkable areas of the country, the priority for the street was to move cars faster.

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