Neighborhood Streets

The following picture is of a typical suburban residential street:

Notice the yellow sign that says "bump". They had to put in that sign because people kept hitting the big bump in the road at high speeds. The bump in the road is there because people were going too fast in the first place. Why were they going too fast? It may have something to do with the 40-foot width of the pavement. 

The following two pictures are typical streets in the Sugarhouse area:

28-foot wide street

32-foot wide street

Notice that the narrower streets don't have speed humps. They have fewer issues with speeding. I don't believe that it's because the people in these Sugarhouse neighborhoods are better drivers than other suburbs of Salt Lake. Speeding in residential neighborhoods is a design issue more than it is a behavior issue. 

On the 28-foot street, parking is allowed on both sides. This makes is so that when two drivers pass each other, often, one will have to pull off and stop to let the other one go by. Maybe this is a bit annoying, but only a bit. It gives you the chance to wave to your neighbor, and it forces you to drive at a reasonable speed. On the 40-foot wide street, it's just too tempting to speed- there's nothing in your way... at least until a little boy chases his ball into the street.

The driver behind wider and wider residential streets over the last few decades is the fire code. Fire trucks need at least a 20-foot clear zone for access and deployment- you don't want a fire truck with the stabilizers out blocking access to the ambulance and the second fire truck. The beauty of Sugarhouse is that it's built on a grid, rather than being full of cul-de-sacs. As a result, there's at least two different ways to get to each house. This means that you can live on a narrow street that is safer for your kids, and safer for your whole family.