[sustran] Pedestrian overpasses

[Eric Britton]

When it comes to BRT and safe pedestrian crossings, it might be useful for
you to have a quick look at the Paris experience.

One of the interesting things about the 17 or so lines which are now given
over to the Parisian version of BRT, which is called Mobilien, is that
instead of a "one size fits all" approach the technicians here have decided
to modulate many aspects of the system with reference to the specifics of
the geometry and other characteristics of the streets and areas being
served.

What I can offer you on this busy Tuesday morning is not a complete exegesis
of how all this works here -sorry no time ---  but I can point you to a
short film made by our friends from Streetfilms in New York during the
course of the visit to Paris shopping around for ideas that might have some
eventual usefulness in the American context.  You can find their
three-minute introductory film clip at http://www.streetfilms.org/mobilien/ 

Of course Paris is not Mumbai and while there are enormous differences in
terms of size and density and variety of traffic and other street users, it
is still perhaps not uninteresting to observe a couple things about the
approach they have taken.  First, you can see from the film the very careful
treatment of intersections, the excellent street markings, the placement of
the signals and  the stops, and the use of traffic islands so that it is
possible for pedestrians to cross larger streets in stages.  Another
characteristic of Paris traffic is that the street system is very dense,
which means that in there are relatively very few long stretches without
intersecting streets and signals.  The Mobilien system and the engineers
behind it have done a first rate job of putting these pieces together for
this particular city and the thoughtful words of the engineer in charge of
the system are I believe worthy of reflection.

Eric Britton 


World Streets  .  www.worldstreets.org    Open Edition:
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+331 7550 3788  .  eric.britton at newmobility.org  .  Skype newmobility
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