Serpentine Design
This serpentine design provides a park-like atmosphere and forces the driver to slow.
Serpentine design refers to the use of a winding street pattern with built-in visual enhancements through a neighborhood, which allow for through movement while forcing vehicles to slow. The opportunities for significant landscaping can be used to create a park-like atmosphere.
Such designs are usually implemented with construction of a new neighborhood street or during reconstruction of an existing street corridor. This type of design can be more expensive than other traffic-calming options and needs to be coordinated with driveway access.
Purpose
- Change the entire look of a street to send a message to drivers that the road is not for fast driving
Considerations
- Where costs are a concern, lower cost, equally effective traffic-calming strategies may be preferable.
- Most cost-effective to build as a new street or where a street will soon undergo major reconstruction for utility or other purposes.
Estimated cost
The cost can be high ($60,000 to $300,000 per block) to retrofit a street, but may be no extra to build a new street with this design if adequate right-of-way is available.
