Square streets
Wouldn’t it be nice if street corners were square? This is something I frequently think about, whether I am walking, biking, or driving. Or just sitting in my house.
Why Rounded?
I presume that street corners in this part of the world (Minneapolis) are rounded because of some idea that maybe cars need to be able to go quickly around them?
Or maybe it has to do with pulling rainwater to the edges of the street at intersections?
Maybe it is that very long vehicles like trucks and especially fire trucks need to have that little bit of extra space?
Snow plows may benefit from having those round corners as they remove snow?
It’s really not quite clear to me what the benefit of rounded corners are, but I bet the above reasons would get regurgitated if brought up. These things feel like they might be true. Or at least were once true. But maybe there is no reason anymore, besides inertia and historical expectation. Could we perhaps move to square corners over time, converting corners as streets are rebuilt over time?
Do cars need to go faster? Probably not. It seems like the trend in the last 5 years has been toward natural street calming for the purpose of slowing cars down. Things like bump outs, bike lanes, raised crosswalks, and increasing visual interest in architecture are all used to make streets more than just narrow highways to fly down.
Do curves help with rainwater? I don’t really know, but I suspect that there are plenty of places in the world that could answer this question based on decades of experience. Surely water can be managed in many ways.
Do the curves help with long trucks? Maybe? How many long trucks are running down these streets anyway? Do we want full length freight vehicles on neighborhood streets? Does every call to a fire department necessitate the ladder truck? Do we really need these huge fire trucks? The answer is no.
From the US Fire Administration (federal gov) (2022):
Only 4% of all reported fire department runs were fire related. Only 3% for residential emergencies.
It seems like there is good evidence that we don’t need to be entirely worried about how big rig fire trucks will make it through every single street in Longfellow.
What about plows? Everyone knows the plows aren’t rounding off those corners after a snow. It’s well known that living on a corner lot sucks in the winter because you have sidewalks to shovel on two edges of your property. Unfortunately, not everyone knows that you should be shoveling a path through the enormous snow ridges that pile up on the corners, which are decidely not rounded off by the plows and thus extend into the street. And because that corner snow isn’t removed, it prevents drainage of melt water into the rainwater system, creating lakes of frigid water on those low corners.
Why Square?
I don’t really buy any of the above reasons for why we should continue to round off the street corners. But why should we have square corners? Who benefits?
Well, human beings benefit, for one. Pedestrians, meaning both people who live in the area and those visiting them, would be safer for a few reasons. When crossing the street they would be more visible at the corner, because they aren’t standing a few extra feet back from the true corner. The crosswalk between square edges is shorter in length (and thus faster to cross). They aren’t trekking over a pile of unplowed snow, or stepping into a morass of half-melted snow that hasn’t been able to drain.
Even cars benefit from clearer boundaries— no more ambiguous pulling forward halfway around the corner just because you approached the intersection at a higher speed. Likely fewer right-hand turns on red.
But really— it’s about the pedestrians. And the poor souls doing the shovelling.