Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:00a.m.
Can you imagine having no traffic lights or signs or any other way of keeping cars and people apart?
The results would be dangerous chaos, right?
Well, they have a lot a faith in human nature in the small Dutch town of Drachten. Its main intersection is a busy place, where cars and trucks compete with people on bicycles, and others on foot.
The normal civic response - here and elsewhere - has been to put in more traffic lights, divide the roadway into lanes - control things. But the response in Drachten has been the opposite - they took the controls away.
A funny thing happened. The accident rate around the intersection went down - way down, from more than eight a year to fewer than two.
"We wanted to appeal to social behaviour, people's own behaviour and their responsibility," says Nieske Ketelaar, Drachten city councillor.
The city council decided to implement a new philosophy in urban planning called 'shared space' - left to their own devices, the thinking goes, people use their own devices.
"A little bit of chaos helps people to think for themselves," says Ms Ketelaar, "be alert and act on the situation."
Not far away, in the village of Makkinga, the sign as you approach town says it is the last sign you will see. All traffic signals and notices have been removed. Everyone from school kids to truck drivers is on their own.
"You see the children looking, 'Where can I cross? What's a good place to cross?'" says Marlies Bouma, Makkinga teacher.
The whole point of the shared space idea is that it changes behaviour. Drivers no longer look for road signs or traffic lights, they look for people on foot and on bicycles.
People on bikes have to look out for themselves and for those in cars and on foot. Those walking have to watch out for everybody else. The whole point of this is that it takes the responsibility away from traffic engineers and puts it onto people.
The idea is catching on in bigger places. There are now shared space schemes in several countries in Western Europe and some being considered in the US.
"As soon as you remove the certainty provided by signals and lines and regulations, then the attitudes of drivers change completely," says Ben Hamilton, urban engineer. "It is a tough sell. It's very difficult and it's not surprising people feel uncomfortable with this idea. It takes a while."
But where it has been tried, the people - and the dropping accident statistics - say it works.
CBS