The Benefits of Street “Daylighting” — And How We Can Do it Right
I don’t love the term “daylighting.” In the context of city planning and safe streets, it has nothing to do with lights.
Yet, I think it’s one of the simplest changes we can do to make our streets safer and to reclaim public space.
What Is Daylighting?
In city planning, “daylighting” is removing the parking space closest to an intersection. This means no parking within 20 feet.
By removing the parking space, it improves visibility for drivers and pedestrians.
This is a hot topic right now because there’s a bill called Intro 1138 in New York City, which would require daylighting at all intersections citywide. (This is called “universal daylighting.”)
Safe street activists, cyclists, pedestrians, and others are working hard to get this bill passed.
Even without this law, daylighting is growing in New York. Local Law 66 passed in 2023 requires the city to daylight at least 100 intersections per year.
For more on what daylighting is and to see it in action, this video from Street Films covers it well.
The Main Benefits of Daylighting: Safer for Drivers, Pedestrians, and Cyclists
I will get into some of the research on daylighting, but I think I can explain it rather intuitively. The bottom line is, everybody can see better.
When there’s a parked car right in front of the cross walk, pedestrians can’t see incoming cars, and cars can’t see pedestrians about to cross.
Cars may be coming. They may not be. As a pedestrian, I won’t know unless I poke my head out, possibly to a car coming very fast who can’t see me.
This is especially dangerous, in my experience, as lights turn. Cars running yellows often speed up just as the crosswalk turns green and people step out.
It’s death and destruction waiting to happen. Okay, now let’s look at some of the data we have.
The Majority of Pedestrian Deaths Occur at Intersections
According to New York City Data, “59 percent of pedestrian fatalities and 77 percent of pedestrian traffic injuries occur at intersections.” For drivers, it’s not much better, at 51 and 68% for death and injuries.
To improve the safety on our streets, intersections are one of the first places to look.
Curb & Sidewalk Extensions Reduce Death and Injury
Daylighting often accompanies wider curbs and sidewalks. This makes the distance for pedestrians shorter.
Barcelona always struck me as a city that does this right. Its octagonal blocks in the l’eixample district mean the distance for pedestrians to cross is really short.
According to the New York City Department of Transportation, curb & sidewalk extensions are associated with a 34% decreased risk of death and injury.
Daylighting Improves Safety for Cyclists
I Citi Bike just about everywhere in New York City.
For me, the only scary part of cycling is the countless cars, often in a rush, and often with little respect for the fact that they could kill me. In particular, though, it’s the times when cars are trying to make a left turn, and I’m to the left of them in a bike lane.
Without daylighting, as the car approaches the intersections that merge into me. I’m often in their blind spot. They can get too close for comfort.
With daylighting, blocking off the 20 feet before an intersection means the car stays a safer distance and at an angle where they can see me. It’s just better for everyone involved, including the drivers, who are guided at an angle that limits the chance of a blindspot.
Again, visuals are the best way to see this. Check out this video from Street Films on what happened when they added daylighting to 2nd Ave.
The NYC DOT calls this specific type of daylighting a form of “Turn Calming” which according to their stats, has seen 22% lower speeds on average.
There is a Catch: “Sign-Only” Daylighting Is Ineffective (At Best)
Before “daylighting” became a popular safe street term, New York City had tons of daylit intersections: where fire hydrants and bus stops meet the curb.
This is called “Sign-Only” daylighting, because it only has a “no standing” or “no parking” sign, but not even so much as paint changes on the street.
So they examined the safety near fire hydrant intersections. What their data shows is counterintuitive. Daylit intersections were more dangerous. They wrote in their analysis, “were associated with a 30% higher normalized rate of pedestrian and total injuries.”
What are we to make of this? First, what could explain how it was more dangerous?
That’s because of a concept called “risk compensation.” Risk compensation is where people take more risks because they perceive things as safer. Because there’s no car blocking their view at an intersection, drivers have a perceived sense of safety and drive faster, leading to more crashes.
The Argument Against Universal Daylighting
If it’s a requirement to daylight all of the intersections as quickly as possible, then the space may not be used for something else. There won’t be bollards or blocks to steer cars away from the space. The space won’t be reused for something else. In these cases, daylighting, as shown by the city’s fire hydrant analysis, may make intersections more dangerous and don’t repurpose the space.
They sum this up nicely, “The simple absence of parking next to a crosswalk does not appear to increase safety on its own.”
Daylighting Needs To Be Accompanied With Reusing The Curb Space
This is called “hardened daylighting.” Reusing the curb space has been shown to improve safety.
Hardened daylighting can include distinguishing paint and bollards that block the cars. It can include bike racks, Citi Bike docks, turn calming, big planter pots, and more.
In some cases, like in the left turn with a bike lane example, bollards and blocks make it safer for everyone. But in many other cases, the possibilities for what we can do with that public space are endless. With that space, we can solve some of New York’s toughest challenges.
The Other Core Benefit of Daylighting: Reclaiming Public Space
The main argument is about safety, but this misses what I think is another huge benefit.
Even if daylighting led to zero benefits for safety, I would still be a huge supporter of it.
That’s because it’s not just about safety, it’s also about what we can do with the public space reclaimed from the free storage of people’s private property.
Let’s get into some of those uses, beyond the turn calming, bollards, and blocks.
More Outdoor Dining
One of the changes in New York City that has made me so sad is the dismantling of the pandemic-era outdoor dining. Instantly, restaurants gained more space, streets had fewer cars, we could all go outside and sip on our coffee or our drink much more like I did in Barcelona.
With daylighting, we can give this space back to outdoor restaurants.
More Green Space
In many daylit intersections, you’ll see giant pots with trees called “stormwater planters.”
Maybe you’ll see flowers, raised beds, or other green space.
This has an array of downstream benefits. Plants and green space help cool off the city in the summer by negating the urban heat island effect. They absorb carbon dioxide and air pollutants, improving the air quality. They absorb rainwater, reducing the strain on the city’s sewer system, which discharges raw sewage on rainy days. Exposure to plants has been shown to improve mental health.
I think more plants alone could very well save New York City, as I write about in this article on community gardens.
No More Trash Bags on The Damn Sidewalk
When I first went to Barcelona, I found their solution to the challenge of city garbage so elegant and simple. On nearly all blocks, they have car-size bins in a row: for trash, recycling, and even compost.
Buildings don’t have refuse rooms. People take out their trash to these bins. You’ll never see piles of garbage on the street. The city doesn’t small and it doesn’t have an infestation of rats.
One of the best uses for curb space reclaimed from private cars would be to solve our trash problem, which in turn solves the rat problem. Put containers for trash, recycling, and compost there.
I love this example because to me it showcases just what we can accomplish if we stop letting free parking take up so much valuable space in the city.
More Citi Bike Docks and Bike Parking
As we take away space from cars, it’s crucial to provide an alternative. The success of the Citi Bike program, which continues to shatter their records each year, shows that people will bike if it’s convenient and safe.
More bikes and bike parking incentivize car-free travel. It takes more cars off the roads, which means less demand for parking spaces, in addition to all kinds of other benefits like cleaner air.
Universal Daylighting Makes This Possible At Scale
It’s not an exaggeration to say that universal daylighting could solve our rat problem. It could open up thousands of mini gardens throughout the city. It could mean that countless more New Yorkers choose to bike instead of drive, which cleans our air and in turn creates a positive feedback loop where we need even less space for cars.
The Philosophical Choice: People Over Cars
When I step back, I can’t help but think how insane it is that we give up so much public land, land owned by us the people, so that drivers, who in New York make about twice as much money as non-drivers, can park their car for free wherever they go.
Daylighting is about recognizing that we can provide so many more benefits for everyone when we repurpose the space for other uses.
Daylighting (kind of like congestion pricing and protected bike lanes) is about the fundamental choice between people or cars.
Live in New York City? Here’s How You Can Support Intro 1138
I would like to give a shout-out to the MicromobilityNYC subreddit.
If you’re interested in safe street activism in NYC, it’s a great place to stay up-to-date and organize.
The founder of the group, who goes by Miser, has put together a clear site on universal daylighting that shows which council members from what community board members have signed on, and which ones the group is trying to agree to sign on to the bill.
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