Road Diet - Techniques

Techniques

A typical road diet technique is to reduce the number of lanes on a roadway cross-section. One of the most common applications of a road diet is to improve safety or provide space for other users in the context of two-way streets with 2 lanes in each direction. The road diet reduces this to 1 travel lane in each direction. The freed-up space is then used to provide any or several of the following features:

• (Wider) footpaths/sidewalks
• (Wider) landscaping strips
• Cycle lanes, on one or both sides of the road
• Wider lane widths on remaining traffic lanes (if previously unsafely narrow to allow four lanes)
• A two-way turn lane / flush traffic median for turning traffic
• A reversible centre lane

If properly designed, traffic does not divert to other streets road after a road diet, because the road previously provided excessive capacity. In other scenarios, reduction of traffic (either local traffic or overall traffic) are intended in the scheme. Road diets are usually successful on roads carrying fewer than 19,000 vehicles per day. Road diets can succeed at volumes up to about 23,000 vehicles per day. However, more extensive reconstruction is needed. Examples include replacing signals with roundabouts, traffic calming on parallel streets to discourage traffic from diverting away from the main road, and other means to keep traffic moving smoothly and uniformly.