Comment by tim333
7 months ago
Yeah, I think from some study in the UK road engineering is one of the cheapest ways to save lives. I think it was about £200k / life. The UK has a decades history of road safety design and the like - I think you can't do these things that quickly. Like it's easy to design a road well on paper but hard to change it once you've built it.
I saw them change the design on the Costa del Sol - the main traffic used to go through town centers - dangerous and slow. Now the town centers are mostly blocked off apart from local access and the traffic goes on a newly built motorway - much better, but it took a lot of construction work.
> Now the town centers are mostly blocked off apart from local access and the traffic goes on a newly built motorway
It's impressive that they managed that. In my country, that solution would probably not work politically because merchants in the town would be afraid to lose business due to less car traffic.
>because merchants in the town would be afraid to lose business due to less car traffic.
This is true (merchants do have that fear) but the fear is unfounded, because far more traffic comes in from local foot traffic than car traffic, so business goes up when the area pedestrianizes.