Traffic calming uses physical design and other measures to improve safety for motorists, car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. It has become a tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviours of drivers. It aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving and potentially reduce traffic flow. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming, including narrowed roads and speed humps. Such measures are common in Australia and Europe, but less so in North America. Traffic calming is a calque of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung – the term's first published use in English was in 1985 by Carmen Hass-Klau.
A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable surface such as tarmac, concrete, cobblestone or brick. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, or otherwise prepared to accommodate non-pedestrian traffic.
A shoulder, hard shoulder or breakdown lane is an emergency stopping lane by the verge on the outer side of a road or motorway. Many wider freeways, or expressways elsewhere have shoulders on both sides of each directional carriageway—in the median, as well as at the outer edges of the road, for additional safety. Shoulders are not intended for use by through traffic, although there are exceptions.
In road transport, a lane is part of a roadway that is designated to be used by a single line of vehicles to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads (highways) have at least two lanes, one for traffic in each direction, separated by lane markings. On multilane roadways and busier two-lane roads, lanes are designated with road surface markings. Major highways often have two multi-lane roadways separated by a median.
A bus bulb, also called a bus boarder, bus border, bumpout, bus cape, or a kerb outstand is an arrangement by which a sidewalk or pavement is extended outwards for a bus stop; typically the bus bulb replaces roadway that would otherwise be part of a parking lane. With bus bulbs or boarders, a bus can stay in its traffic lane to discharge and pick up passengers, instead of having to pull over to the curb.
A jughandle is a type of ramp or slip road that changes the way traffic turns left at an at-grade intersection. Instead of a standard left turn being made from the left lane, left-turning traffic uses a ramp on the right side of the road. In a standard forward jughandle or near-side jughandle, the ramp leaves before the intersection, and left-turning traffic turns left off of it rather than the through road; right turns are also made using the jughandle. In a reverse jughandle or far-side jughandle, the ramp leaves after the intersection, and left-turning traffic loops around to the right and merges with the crossroad before the intersection.
A bollard is a sturdy, short, vertical post. The term originally referred to a post on a ship or quay used principally for mooring boats. It now also refers to posts installed to control road traffic and posts designed to prevent automotive vehicles from colliding or crashing into pedestrians and structures.
A wide outside lane (WOL) or wide curb lane (WCL) is an outermost lane of a roadway that is wide enough to be safely shared side by side by a bicycle and a wider motor vehicle at the same time. The terms are used by cyclists and bicycle transportation planners in the United States. Generally, the minimum-width standard for a WOL in the US is 14 feet. A wide outside through lane (WOTL) is a WOL that is intended for use by through traffic.
Bicycle transportation planning and engineering are the disciplines related to transportation engineering and transportation planning concerning bicycles as a mode of transport and the concomitant study, design and implementation of cycling infrastructure. It includes the study and design of dedicated transport facilities for cyclists as well as mixed-mode environments and how both of these examples can be made to work safely. In jurisdictions such as the United States it is often practiced in conjunction with planning for pedestrians as a part of active transportation planning.
A curb, or kerb, is the edge where a raised sidewalk or road median/central reservation meets a street or other roadway.
A road diet is a technique in transportation planning whereby the number and/or the width of travel lanes of the road is reduced to achieve proven improvements, including a statistically attested crash reduction rate of 19% to 47%.
In road design, a slip lane is a road at a junction that allows road users to change roads without actually entering an intersection. Slip lanes are "helpful ...for intersections designed for large buses or trucks to physically make a turn in the space allotted, or where the right turn is sharper than a 90 degree turn." Slip lanes may reduce congestion and "t-bone" motor vehicle collisions, but they increase the risk for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders who cross the slip lane.
The geometric design of roads is the branch of highway engineering concerned with the positioning of the physical elements of the roadway according to standards and constraints. The basic objectives in geometric design are to optimize efficiency and safety while minimizing cost and environmental damage. Geometric design also affects an emerging fifth objective called "livability", which is defined as designing roads to foster broader community goals, including providing access to employment, schools, businesses and residences, accommodate a range of travel modes such as walking, bicycling, transit, and automobiles, and minimizing fuel use, emissions and environmental damage.
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except where cyclists are barred such as many freeways/motorways. It includes amenities such as bike racks for parking, shelters, service centers and specialized traffic signs and signals. The more cycling infrastructure, the more people get about by bicycle.
Two-wheelers are a common sight and widely used in Japan. Of these, bicycles and scooters are the most common.
A protected intersection or protected junction, also known as a Dutch-style junction, is a type of at-grade road junction in which cyclists and pedestrians are separated from cars. The primary aim of junction protection is to help pedestrians and cyclists be and feel safer at road junctions.
Terminology related to road transport—the transport of passengers or goods on paved routes between places—is diverse, with variation between dialects of English. There may also be regional differences within a single country, and some terms differ based on the side of the road traffic drives on. This glossary is an alphabetical listing of road transport terms.
There is debate over the safety implications of cycling infrastructure. Recent studies generally affirm that segregated cycle tracks have a better safety record between intersections than cycling on major roads in traffic. Furthermore, cycling infrastructure tends to lead to more people cycling. A higher modal share of people cycling is correlated with lower incidences of cyclist fatalities, leading to a "safety in numbers" effect though some contributors caution against this hypothesis. On the contrary, older studies tended to come to negative conclusions about mid-block cycle track safety.
The road signs, used on the Serbian road network, are regulated by the "Regulation of Traffic Signs", which was last time modified in 2017.
A stroad is a type of street–road hybrid. Common in the United States and Canada, stroads are wide arterials that often provide access to strip malls, drive-throughs, and other automobile-oriented businesses. Stroads have been criticized by urban planners for their safety issues and inefficiencies. While streets serve as a destination and provide access to shops and residences at safe traffic speeds, and roads serve as a high-speed connection that can efficiently move traffic at high speed and volume, stroads are often expensive, inefficient, and dangerous.
