Good Design on the Roads of New Zealand
One of the best things about traveling is that we can see and observe good design and realize that our own city or country doesn’t have a monopoly on good design and should potentially adopt others’ good ideas as well.
The reason why we can see so much good design in the world is because many of the bad (or not as good) designs have been removed over time and replaced with something better. At any given moment or place, the observable products and processes generally represent the best designs that the local people or nation could adopt or afford. Of course, scenarios and environments change, new innovations are discovered, and a design might be used in a way that was unpredicted, and so we still see less than ideal designs everywhere too. Still, the current observable set of designs in the world represent the latest and greatest in design progress but with a delay since it takes time to build, install, and realize those designs. With the passage of time, some of those designs become outdated and are replaced, updated, improved, or removed. Therefore, some of these less than ideal designs persist, but a traveler can expect the worst ones to be gone eventually, even if it takes a few years for some concepts to play themselves out and become discarded.
Recently I had the opportunity to visit New Zealand for an extended period of time. Although most Kiwis speak English (with Maori as another official language), their country is still very unique compared to mine. They drive on the left side of the road, their summers are during my winters, and they have a lot more relaxed as a culture, to name a few.
Among the differences, one is bound to be impressed with some or many of the differences and some or many of the design choices. I was no exception. In the following sections, I’ve chosen just a few designs, among the many possibilities, found while driving that I believe should be adopted elsewhere in the world when the right conditions are met.
Single-Lane Bridges
A good design and a common occurrence throughout New Zealand are single-lane bridges. I’ve come across a few in my own country, and I know they are more common and exist in other parts of the world. Still, having to contend with so many every day while driving around, even on some of the main highways of New Zealand, caused me to think about them extensively.
The reason why I consider single-lane bridges a good design is because the country has correctly decided that it does not require two lanes for the vast majority of the traffic at these particular river or valley crossings. Of course, in other locations of New Zealand, there are bridges of three or even four lanes wide, but since the population is small enough, single-lane bridges are the right design for the conditions in many locations.
As would be expected in these scenarios with little or no traffic, I was able to drive directly across these bridges after confirming there were no vehicles coming from the other direction almost 90% of the time. Since single-lane bridges are common in New Zealand, they have designated one of the two directions as having priority, or the right of way, to deal with the situations when vehicles do arrive at the same time.
The figure below shows the simple system where one side of the bridge (my side) is to give the right of way to the other direction. If there was a car on the other side of the bridge (indicated by the black arrow), this car in the picture and I would have had to wait.
The reason I love this bridge design is that it didn’t seem wasteful and doesn’t come with any real downsides. This resource (i.e. a bridge) is used for crossing, but with twice the usage for half the cost (well, maybe not half the cost due to economies of scale, but definitely at a significantly lower cost). For a comparative product, think about shared vehicles which often have higher utilization rates (i.e. the number of hours in operation divided by the total time). For example, I sometimes only use my car for 60 minutes during a 5-day work week driving to and from my home five times. During the other 7140 minutes (during those 5 days) it sits in a parking lot or on my street doing nothing but rotting away. Yes, there is a benefit as I have constant availability in being able to come or go when I please but I could probably make use of this resource better during the other 7140 minutes. Perhaps I should split the cost of my next car with a few other people who have a complementary schedule as me. We would all have the same benefit at half the cost, with only a minor downside of waiting a few times for an uber or taxi when they or I really needed transportation at a moment’s notice and our car wasn’t available. It’s both more cost effective and less wasteful.
The design lesson I take away from single-lane bridges is that shared resources can offer less expensive solutions, be more sustainable, and still meet all of the design requirements. . New Zealand can always add another lane when the time, need, and circumstances demand another lane. In the meantime, a single-lane bridge is the right design for the requirements.
Work Site Traffic Controllers
I was traveling in New Zealand in November and December which is their spring or summer time. As could be expected, since the weather is better during their summer time, there were quite a few locations where workers were repairing the asphalt or upgrading road sections.
At these work sites, the traffic needs to take turns driving on a single lane around the work area (very similar to single-lane bridges). However, at these work sites, if you can’t see around the corner or to the other end of the single-lane section, often a human will control traffic by turning a stop sign (with a “slow sign” on the other side) 180 degrees back and forth every 30 to 45 seconds depending upon the length of the worksite.
Of course, this set-up requires two people, one on each end of the work site, communicating via radio on traffic conditions for the shift of eight or more hours in a day. Unfortunately, humans may need to stay at these positions throughout the night and do the same thing around the clock taking turns with vehicles driving both directions continuously until the work is complete.
In New Zealand, often the construction work sites make use of automated sensors to perform the same task especially at night and during lengthy repairs.
Although this saves considerable money because the contractor no longer has to pay workers that flip a sign around back and forth for eight hours in a row, it does leave the drivers with a dilemma when stopped at one end facing a red control light for more than a minute without seeing any other vehicles come toward them. If you’ve ever been at a red light that seemed a little longer than usual (i.e., three or four times too long), you might have started to speculate it was broken, and in response you were likely unsure if you should go through it or wait even longer. It’s a dilemma everyone faces at some point.
The good design that I noticed while in New Zealand was that a countdown timer is presented at many of these locations. It instantly alleviated any apprehension that something was broken (even if it was!).
You can see the simple set-up in the following figure. We couldn’t see the other end of the worksite and we couldn’t see if any other cars were coming but we were content waiting another 37 seconds. At this particular location, there weren't any other cars that came after the one shown in the photo. So, sure, the time delay itself wasn’t optimized for the precise queue of cars at the other end, but it’s better to err on the side of caution with these types of one-lane travel. The automated controller managed our expectations very well and we knew our turn to go was approaching in a reasonable amount of time.
These countdown timers are not new and most countries have some form of countdown timers at either traffic lights or pedestrian crossings, but the lesson is that good design will include good communication, especially in managing expectations.
Usually users or customers are okay to wait some amount of time if they know generally that their turn is going to take place in a reasonable time frame. But what is frustrating to customers, is the uncertainty as to when their turn will come, or if their turn will ever come.
A more interesting design in New Zealand was when the countdown timer was connected to a very simple animation. Take a look:
This little decreasing pie animation kept us distracted and made the wait seem even shorter. Operations engineers and ride planners and schedulers know that we as users don’t notice the time that passes as much when we’re distracted. In fact, you probably know this too after looking at your watch after that planned 5-minute session on social media turned into a binge session of 2 to 3 hours. This is why amusement parks like to have videos and other distractors in the queue for the most popular and busy rides – we walk away having a perceived better overall experience in terms of the cost of waiting versus the thrill. (I’ve heard my own children say “The wait wasn’t too bad!” but they were in line for over an hour for a 45 second ride. Thank goodness for that TV they kept staring at.)
Computers and software applications are replete with these types of distractors like spinning clocks and twirling spheres. For example, I was recently working on my taxes. The software I was using had me wait for the “bar to be filled” but I knew it was just trying to distract me for various reasons. Afterall, the tax calculations are just additions and multiplications at the end of the day. The 100 or so calculations needed for my tax return could be done in micro-seconds on a modern CPU. But the software designers wanted to make me feel like it was “working really hard” and distracted me so that in case my network and data bandwidth was limited, my experience was still satisfying.
Roundabouts
My daughter is currently learning how to drive. She has her learner’s permit. Her confidence isn’t to the level it needs to be but it’s coming. One of her recent “traffic challenges'' to tackle was the roundabout or traffic circle. These no-traffic light intersections can be free flowing if everyone follows the basic rules of yielding to vehicles inside the roundabout and properly signals and communicates to others what they intend on doing and then stick to that plan.
I saw a much larger percentage of roundabouts in New Zealand compared to the USA. I believe most countries should follow their example including my own country. I’m a big proponent of roundabouts since the benefits are extensive [1]. Among the benefits are:
1. Less idling (better for the environment).
2. No running yellow/red lights (safer, i.e., removing head-on collisions).
3. No complications with turning left across traffic (again safer, although it’s “no right turns” in New Zealand!).
4. Less infrastructure and energy required to power traffic lights (cheaper, cost savings).
5. No red lights to wait at (time savings, especially at low traffic times).
6. They are often safer for pedestrians (drivers can be more attentive and look around more since they must steer on a curved path instead of straight lanes).
Don’t overestimate my support for traffic circles. I’m well aware that roundabouts should not be installed in every location. There are very important reasons why traffic lights need to persist at many intersections but one should not simply default to the standard traffic light, or even four-way stop, when many benefits could be gained by considering a roundabout first.
My design lesson from these observations is to be cautious about implementing a past solution in all circumstances because it worked somewhere else. Quite often we are slow to adopt or implement new tools because it takes effort and time to learn them. We don’t always adequately ascertain the benefits of trying something new since we expect the familiar to work better than anything novel, a classic example of the status quo bias. For this reason, we use the same software, the same browser, the same processes, and the same mechanisms even though there may be easier, faster, and better ways. None of us have time to learn and become a master of every tool in the toolbox, but we should at least be willing to at least rummage around in the toolbox and see if a better tool exists that we haven’t tried before.
To overcome this bias in all of us, try to think of that one person in your life who is slow to adopt a solution, software, idea, or principle that you shared with them and that you know would help them. Since they haven’t taken your suggestion, try to imagine that you are that person for someone else in the world. Exercise the smallest bit of humility and try out their suggestion. More often than never, you’ll be surprised that their good design ideas are not too bad.
Good design can come from other people and good design can come from other places. New Zealand has some great examples of good design and we should be quick to consider those ideas.
Notes
[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/3-reasons-cities-installing-roundabouts/
