So this Schikane is supposed to do what?

The way it is depicted, it is sure to create a neat new safety hazard.
I can just see people swerving around them and, in the crest of their steering curve, hit the other vehicle careening out of it's own trajectory.....nice!

At least, space them further apart - or use the good old speed humps, they work like a charm!

Fine when they are properly signposted - however when they use non-illuminated bollards with faulty reflectors they can be death traps at night. I have nearly driven into two because the lighting was not working and the reflectors were filthy due to bad UK road maintenance.

Of course, there's always the temptation to see this as a slalom course, especially with those frisky WRXs and EVOs. May not slow traffic down a bit, and could lead to flips.

In my neighborhood, where there is a chicane created by the cars parked on the narrow street, no one slows down. They race through like it is, well, a chicane ... trying to get through before the on-coming car gets there before them. It does the opposite of what looks to be intended here. If my neighborhood was made of clay, I'd wad up some speed bumps.

So they want to add more more curb to reduce partking spots. Then we have to drive even longer to find a place to park, increasing exhaust production.

I realize my statement is worst case senerio, but to increase exhaust production just to make pedestrians feel better is just not very smart.

I am currently in my second apartment, with a traffic calming device in front of it. Both are tiny round abouts. We often hear the screeching of breaks, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, followed by thumps, as cars don't see the badly illuminated round about, and run into it.

When I go out in the morning, sure enough, there are tire tracks in the flower beds.

I am thinking of hooking up a web cam on this new place, because it's so frequent.

Traffic calming is well and good. And this idea is good in most respects. But it is not a very good complete street concept. It has two major flaws that I encounter regularly. The first is that the chicanes are often used as part of a pedestrian cross walk. Since trees and other flora is planted in the bump outs it also obscures the pedestrian until the moment they step off the curb. Which is always bad for drivers. They need more time to stop.

The second issue is that this usually trims the amount of available lane for cyclists. This means that cyclists have to permanently merge with car traffic to traverse the road that has the chicanes. An experienced cyclist might not see this as a problem. But most novice cyclists find this stressful.

I say NO to chicanes and speedbumps too. See the comments above.

Where do the bicycles go? While the animation was cool, bike were notable absent. In Atlanta, it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk. The traffic calming is so miserable that a local bike advocacy group is constantly fighting it. I've primarily noticed:
1. skip marks everywhere
2. numerous near-collisions
3. scrapes from bottomed-out cars
4. tail-gating
5. people who can't manage the tight turns in their SUVs

Granted, people should slow down, but the design needs to occur with human nature in mind, not in some theoretically perfectly world.

That 'toolbox' has some pretty ideas. They are not very practical, other than to force people to go somewhere else, but they are pretty. Most look more like a traffic headache to allow for more idling of cars.

Diagnal parking? We intentionally are going to make it harder for people to see cars coming so they can back out?

Changing one-way streets to two-way... wasn't the point of the one-way street to improve flow?

Narrower traffic lanes, wider sidewalks? Ok, but if you live where there is snow you'll need the extra width to put the snow somewhere.. up on the sidewalk I guess. You also effectively block the entire road should their be a breakdown. Roadway lanes are the size they are for a reason.

Chicanes: (from the site)An undulating path interrupts any clear view ahead and compels drivers to slow down (end of quote). What kind of stupidity is this? Sorry, but we are going to intentionally block the view of drivers so that they cannot see the road conditions up ahead. Ambulance drivers will have to hope they route they took isn't blocked becuase they will not be able to see where they are going?

Where is the line between traffic calming and traffic jamming? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they have a problem with implementing 'traffic calming solutions' in Phoenix that resulted in it taking over 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, by which time the person was dead?

Lets see.. what else...
Roundabouts - aka Suicide circles. They started putting these here in Minnesota and for me it worked. I no longer drive to that area, I go somewhere else instead. A roundabout can be easily found, follow the sounds of horns, the crunch of metal, and the misc. noises of cars running over broken car parts and glass scattered around the intersection. Put them where you can't even see the lines on the ground for two or three months out of the year from snow and ice and you get a mess. Traffic calming? No. Traffic jamming and diverting down side streets... yes. They also tend to fill with pedestrians cutting acorss them because they don't care much for the longer walk around the circle.

Traffic circle... see roundabout. Basically a smaller form of uncontrolled chaotic traffic flow and broken car parts.

Raised medians - I'm mixed on these. For a single lane each way it is a bad idea, far to easy to block. For mulitple lanes each way, fine.

Tight Corner Curbs - Nice, will slow cars, but will make impossible travel for utility trucks, fire equipment, garbage trucks, etc

Diverters - These do work, we have some in Minneapolis, but they are basicaly long chicanes which can cause a total mess by blocking in traffic when things go wrong. May seem trivial to some, but try backing up a school bus in the winter for three winding blocks on a dark winter night because the road is blocked with a stalled car.

Bumps, Humps, Strips, Cushions, et al... become ice ramps, road debris, snow plow driver injuries, pot holes, and other such wonderful things after a couple years in a winter state. Nothing funnier than watching people stuck on a road full of speed bumps because the ice won't let them get enough traction and they can't get a run up on the bump.

Traffic calming would be better served by traffic enforcement, which will pay for city services, rather than intentionally making blind crossings, and dangerous low-visibility tight areas. Oh they look so pretty in the pictures don't they? The cars (and businesses) are gone, travelling somewhere else. The community might be better served just closing the roads completely and hope you never need a service vehicle of any kind.

-Lego

backing up on what chris said, we've got similar "traffic calming" measures here in ATL, and the chicanes make it hard on cyclists. I like what Sacramento and Berkeley do instead, where they have bicycle boulevards and streets with lots of undulations (like speed bumps but gentler on a cyclist) to keep traffic slow thru residential areas. These streets typically connect major thoroughfares with bike lanes and some of them also run parallel.

I am a bit surprised about the negative responses on this article. In Holland we have a lot of these kind of "traffic calming measures" especially in residential areas. They work very well. Maybe it is a question of good design. It is totally impossible to pass the the dutch "verkeerssluizen" with high speed.

Furthermore, usually there is a bypass for cyclists, so they do not have to go through to the chicane.

Further furthermore, in my home town there was a crossing secured by traffic lights at which a lot of accidents happened. Since the crossing was replaced by a mini-roundabout it is a much safer place!

Finally, car drivers seldom like these kind of measures, but they don't like anything that prevents them from driving at 200 km/h all the time. So ignore them.

For inspiration for all you US and Canadian bike activists some cycling in the Netherlands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLLp1lhVlkY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzjmVHXxm9c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odoJiGpPohg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEc-uNQhIaA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRAUE_gons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoog9ZWiLc4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w5vX3CesuQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a25aQx4V2Ws

for more just use search term: "fietsen"

These things actually work well in combination with speed bumps. One of the old neighborhoods I travelled through often them with speed - depressions (?) instead of bumps and no stop signs. It forced you to drive slow unless you wanted to scratch your car and it was very smooth at the same time. Effective when done well. Also, it adds a streetscape element to the street and make the neighborhood much cozier than the street to the north of it.

This was tried in Concord NH. First millions was spent on speed bumps then millions on speed tables (long drawn out speed bumps); the best solution by the way, because of bikers & snow removal. Then millions was spent on these stupid "chicanes". DEATH TRAPS actually!!!! Nightmare because traffic is actually one lane, only one car can go through at a time. How do you enforce right of way? Who has right of way? With the way teens drive, only the teens have right of way. Snow removal was a nightmare. One year later millions was spent on making the streets as they had been since the beginning of roads. Also the streets always had a speed limit of only 25mph anyway, and all the intersections were 4-way stop signs. I hope I never see chicanes again. STUPID!!!! STUPID!!!! STUPID!!!

Portland Oregon uses traffic calming in residential neighborhods and it seems to work very well. You don't see cars going down residential streets very much unless they are headed home.

It keeps the cars to the faster streets -- therefore, walkers & bikers can relax a little. The bikes don't have very much competition on these streets, and when they do, people are going more slowly because they live there.