A couple of years ago I posted an article concerning a traffic (anti)planner who thought road signs were a sign of poor design. A former student (Paul Poenicke) alerted me to this similar piece. Even though the guy explicitly says he’s not an anarchist, I think he’s doing it because in his mind anarchist=nut. Maybe someone should send him a copy of For a New Liberty.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/5879/anarchy-well-almost-in-the-roads/
Anarchy (well, almost) in the Roads
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Are you sure that your old article was about another road planner? This one is an old story: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
And so far he remains the only one
Sadly, it’s uniformity that all these traffic planners seek. It doesn’t occur to them that if maybe all roads were private we’d have seen an entirely new development that works even better than what some north dutch town did. But we will never know, because bureaucrats run the show.
That said, it’s nice to hear of some creative thinking by the same professionals who make my clients pave and mark parking lots in a manner that is proven to maximize accidents and minimize useable space.
I love this story! I even made an account and tried to submit this story on the forum the other day, but it said I didn’t have the ability to start a thread or something.
I mentioned this to a few people and they didn’t think it would work with all the crazy road rage people we have here in Indiana.
The only thing I have some question about is when there is an accident how would you ever decide who was at fault? I guess it would always be a completely 50/50 split or would each person just be responsible to repair their own damage? What do you think?
In this case it is pretty easy, because in the Netherlands when an accident occurs the motorist is (nearly) always resposible for the damage. And on the roundabout in the article, pedestrians and cyclist have priority over motorists.
The roundabout in the article is in fact quite dangerous, because as a motorist you don’t really see the cyclists, who want to cross, coming. The intention being that therefore motorist should drive very slow on the roundabout, but that generally not being the case, it is quite dangerous especially for cyclists and there have been many accidents.
Robert:
The environmental blog Grist has a number of posts and links on this; see this from Nov. 23: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/22/165435/87 “> Dave’s cardinal rule of urban planning: fewer rules.
Could it be that some radical enviro collectivists understand that the government that governs least might be the best?
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