Hans Monderman is a crazy traffic engineer with a different vision of traffic management, and I’m in love with his ideas. I just read a Reuters ‘Oddly Enough’ story called Town ditches traffic lights to cut accidents, which led me to find Hans Monderman’s Wikipedia page, which lead me to the Wiki for Shared Space, his concept.
A lot of his ideas have been implemented in northern Europe, which is kinda notoriously progressive. That makes sense. What really blew my mind was that it’s also been implemented in small areas of West Palm Beach, FL. And it’s been immensely effective. I followed the source for that to the Wired story Roads Gone Wild. The West Palm stuff is on page 2, and it’s highly recommended reading.
The traffic system is sick, and needs to be fixed. I eagerly look forward to the proliferation of these ideas, and would love to live in a place where they’ve been implemented.
I would also love to have the sense of satisfaction with my job that Mr. Monderman must have. I mean, this guy’s saving lives and improving the quality of those lives. That’s something special.
fengshui | 05-Oct-07 at 5:55 pm | Permalink
You’ve got it backwards. The free trade agreement would require Costa Rica to open up their state telecom and insurance monopolies to competition, not to create monopolies. They already have those.