Translated material
Let's make Baranov Street with a pedestrian area!
In the summer of the past, during the pre-election “struggle”, the head of Kaliningrad, Mr. Yaroshuk, said a lot and in detail that our city should be made convenient and comfortable for living. The phrase often flocked from his mouth: "The city needs pedestrian zones." The theses flew to public activists: "Let's discuss. What streets do you think should be transferred to the category of pedestrian?" From different sides, certain options were sprinkled addressed to him. Our initiative group ("City Projects Kaliningrad") decided not to stay away and make its proposal. We consulted and I decided :) that we will go out and the proposal that the status of the pedestrian zone must be given st. Baranova.
There are two points:
1. Why exactly st. Baranova? Everything is simple.
Everyone knows her, almost everyone walks on her daily, and she is also visible from the windows of the city hall, which is important. And the most important! Everyone knows what pedestrian hell is going on there.
As they say - no comment:
2. St. Baranova is quite long. It is not realistic to go out to make a pedestrian area throughout the length of this street. From the beginning, pedestrians should be "pick up" a small section of this street, and then squeeze further.
These two points have become the main starting points when we decided to take up the study of this street. Here you need to understand that just like a bit of the type: "And let's make Grekova/ Sommer/ et al." - it is forbidden. When arguing your proposal, it is necessary to have numbers on the hands, which can show a real picture that allows you to make the right decision.
Then the question arose of how we get information about traffic on the street. Baranova? That's right, it is necessary to conduct a study of this section of the street in order to study the quantitative indicators of pedestrian and automobile flows.
The research methodology is simple: people/cars who have passed/drove through this section of the street are counted. Data is recorded for every hour during the day. The counting was carried out on business days in the interval from 8 in the morning to the 21st in the evening. Thanks to this temporary parameter, we were able to track the daily dynamics of streams.
The person who conducted the study was here (in the green circle), due to which it was possible to track the movement in all directions of pedestrian and automobile flows.
In reality, it looked something like this:
(In the photo: Marina Musatova conducts a study of Baranova St.)
How to briefly conducted a short study - it does not matter. The result is important. So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to get acquainted with the results of a quantitative study that were conducted in August-September 2012.
Final data:
The same data in the graphic performance:
The data obtained in the form of interest in relation to each other:
What do we have in the end? And in the end we have the following:
What is the conclusion? And the conclusion is this: today everything is very, very sad and sad. And this situation must be changed. How? We act on the principle of democratic centralism - the minority obeys the majority. Everything is brilliant - simple: on the street. Baranova passes 4 times more pedestrians in a day than cars drive, it follows that the street should be given to pedestrians. DOT!
I hear the moans of motorists: how so? And what to do with the traffic that is now present on this section of the street? Do not do anything. Just close through drives for cars and that’s all. I assure you, nothing terrible will happen. And do not say that a catastrophe happens. I can say that you and I have already passed something similar, and the most interesting thing is right away in the square. Do you remember?
Remember how much whining was about the fact that the transverse passage through the square was closed? Nothing, we drive, are used to it. So in our case, the weeks will not pass, like everyone who traveled here, will rebuild their daily routes and will, as before, push in traffic jams that will not increase and will not decrease from this. But, despite the fact that life will not change for motorists, a small area of the street will become much more pleasant for a huge number of citizens.
Offering to change the status of the street to a pedestrian area, you can’t just say so: let's close the street for a car and that’s it.
Today our site looks like this:
In this section of Baranov, we have several problematic points:
- entry into the Parking of the CT "Clover";
- entry/exit to the Radisson Hotel;
- Entrance/exit to the parking shopping center "Acropolis".
There is a problem that should be perceived as a task, and it is necessary to find a solution to it. Here's what we offer:
No. 1
No. 2
No. 3
No. 4
(*Note. From the side of the village of Pobed, departure from the parking is impossible. There should be a movement only to enter the parking lot).
Personally, I like the 3rd of the proposed, the option, having chosen which we get a completely free space for the pedestrian zone. Which option is more cute to you?
Technically, everything is done very simply. To begin with, all entrances/trips to the parking lots:
(... here, for example)
- They rise to the level of the sidewalk so that the cars, when entering the parking lot, understand that they are traveling through the "alien" territory, which is intended only for it to enter the parking lot.
- In addition to the raised sidewalk, the entrance/exit to the parking must be indicated by street columns with the width between them a little more than the width of the car itself (not more than 2 meters). This is a prerequisite, because as soon as you make the width of the road for two cars, there will be a car parked on the sidewalk from one edge. And so (with a width of one car) it will not work, because the motorist understands that if he puts the car on such a passage, then he is there to block the entire entrance to the parking lot.
I did not mention the technical gate in the building of the Clover shopping center, which go to our street. Did it not by chance. These gates are not used regularly. This means that those who use these gates can change their download/unloading schedule in such a way as to carry out all the necessary processes in specific hours, for example, triple and evening.
When people found out that we propose to give this section of the street under the pedestrian zone, they expressed objections, explaining them by the fact that for the pedestrian zone it is not enough just to close the entry of cars. On the "right" pedestrian street, street cafes and small trade objects, a certain public art and other emergence of street activity should be equipped. Yes, everything is right. But there is one but. In order for all this street activity to appear, it is necessary to give a place for it. But nothing else.
We will never get any street activity, in the place where in order to go through the group of pedestrians they need to be rebuilt in a row to leak past the car:
The city and business should taste this candy called "pedestrian zone" and then you and I will have street cafes on every corner ...
(this is Moscow, one of the pedestrian streets)
... and street musicians:
(somewhere in Europe)
These are just some examples of how the streets come to life when they are made purely pedestrian. There is also a “great and horror” Maxkatz Katz, who in his recent post showed how the streets of Moscow are changing when they become pedestrian.
All this is in European cities. Similar streets began to appear even in Moscow. We can only mark on how our streets could be transformed:
... and how now:
How should it be:
... and compare with what it is:
PS
What next?
Then I plan to transfer the printed version of this study at the City Hall of Kaliningrad. If you get, I will do it in the form of a presentation. I don’t know what reaction to expect from officials. I am more and more convinced that there is nothing more unpredictable than our city hall.
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Gratitude!
Many thanks to everyone who took part in the quantitative accounting of people and cars:
- Konstantin Soldatkin
- Irina Mikhalevich and "Ko"
- Marina Musatova
Personal gratitude to the vcheese architect Vladimir Syroezhkin. It is specifically for us, in his free time from work, he prepared architectural schemes, and also made sketches of the future pedestrian st. Baranova.
And, of course, the first-class designer Sergei Sadov, who made a miracle infographic, looking at which everything becomes clear without additional words and explanations.