[sustran] Slowth

[eric.britton]

From: Peter Newman [mailto:P.Newman at murdoch.edu.au] 
Sent: Tuesday, 1 January 2008 17:48
To: eric.britton at ecoplan.org
Subject: RE: Slowth

 

Great concept. It is at the heart of traffic calming of course and now
'Naked Streets' as well as the Slow Cities idea from Italy. 

 

It is interesting that 20 to 30 kph is the speed that we are bilogically
made for as our maximum. It is the speed that sprinters reach and of course
over thousands of years our hand eye co-ordination has adapted to that speed
so we see so much more at or below that speed. Birds can see at much faster
speeds and have adapted their skills and observation accordingly. 

 

We can't do much at high speed other than stay straight so we have awful
accidents all the time due to 'human error' and somehow get surprised by it.


 

Peter Newman

 

  _____  

From: eric.britton [mailto:eric.britton at ecoplan.org]
Sent: Tue 1/01/2008 23:21
To: NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
Cc: Lee Schipper; 'Carlosfelipe Pardo'; 'Sujit Patwardhan'; Todd Litman
(Todd Litman); s.p.platt at bham.ac.uk; Hans Monderman; Jan Gehl; Aaron
Naparstek; Peter Newman; Jeff Kenworthy
Subject: Slowth

Thanks, Carlos, Todd, Lee, Sujit, Simon.

 

Much in this spirit I have for some years been a firm supporter of the
concept of "slowth" - that which occurs in situations when your top speed is
limited but somehow you get there first.  Myriad examples abound, and in
addition to Aesop's good write-up of this highly technical point a few years
back, we have the example of thousands of cities - Paris being one -- in
which you or  I just about invariably get there first if we take our bike
and not our Ferrari.

 

(I am not sure as to when or where I first ran into this word, but I have
been using it rather often in my own work for more than a decade now. 

 

A traffic system based on slowth is going to be carefully calibrated to
lower top speeds - way 20 or 30 kph works well for me - but where the entire
system leads to far steadier flows and throughput, and, with it, greater
safety, lower emissions, and higher quality of life all around. 

 

If I were a young traffic engineer, I would certainly want to make this a
pillar of my life work - which of course is exactly what wonderful people
like Hans Monderman, Jan Gehl and a growing cohort of young practitioners
are now doing.   It's a splendid thing to do.

 

Eric Britton

 

PS.  Just looked slowth up in the Urban Dictionary which provides the
following, to me, rather unpromising definition: "Slowness. Generally
sloth-like behavior, especially of computers or co-workers."
(http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slowth)

 

PS2. That done I next looked up slowth just now in the Wikipedia and found
no entry.  But now if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowth you will
see the following entry, which I hope that one or more of you may wish to
jump in and complete. It's a very important concept and really does need a
far higher profile. Words count. 

 

 

Slowth is a New Mobility
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Mobility&action=edit>
transport planning concept, describing a physical situation, usually in a
city, in which lower top speeds can lead to shorter overall travel times.

(The traditional "model" for this is of course Aesop's tale of the race
between the tortoise and the hare, in which the slow turtle arrives well
before the fast rabbit.)

This is a powerful model which transport and city planners are only recently
starting to take seriously.

A traffic system based on slowth is carefully calibrated to lower top speeds
- 20 or 30 kph on most city streets is one common target - but where the
entire system leads to far steadier flows and throughput, and, with it,
greater safety, lower emissions, and higher quality of life all around.

************ now help make this better. *******