Tag: Transportation

On Traffic Rules

William Phelps Eno. That’s a name you have never heard of, most likely, but it’s one that affects your daily life more than you realize. You see, Mr. Eno is the man most responsible for the way we use our automobiles on public roads. Eno is often referred to by historians as the “Father of Traffic Safety” for his innovative ideas on how to use vehicles and how those vehicles should interact with the public at large.

The mobile society brought about by the production of the automobile was not anything Eno would have imagined when he was born in 1858 in New York City–ironically one of the cities that would benefit most from his later innovations. His father was a well-to-do real estate investor in the city, and his mother was from an old wealthy New England family. As the child of this pair, Eno studied at Yale and had a wide range of interests. Having financial security allowed him the time to think about the issues of traffic in the city and how to solve those situations.

Actually, according to Eno, it wasn’t automobiles that first caused him to consider the issues surrounding traffic in New York City. One day, as a young man, he and his mother were caught in a traffic jam of horses and carriages and wagons. It was immediately clear to the young Eno that a solution needed to be enacted to alleviate the tangled traffic. He enjoyed order, Eno did, and he approached the problem from that angle. For him, the answer lay with establishing regulations for traffic and then instructing the law enforcement authorities on how to enforce those regulations. Thus, to him, the solution was one of clarification and education of both the public and the police. People should have easy and clear understanding of the regulations, and the police should know how to help them navigate those regulations.

Thus, in 1900, which really was before cars were the predominant mode of transportation in the city, Eno published his plan. He called it Reform in Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed. That led him to create the first traffic code for the city a few years later. No other city had such a code, so New York was ahead of the curve. That led him to be asked by other major international cities such as Paris and London to create similar plans for them as well.

One way streets? That was Eno. Clearly defined lanes? Yep, he did that. Pedestrian crossings marked out at intersections? Ditto. In fact, most of the things we take for granted in traffic organization today were from the mind of William Phelps Eno. One creation of his is omnipresent in Europe but rare in the United States: The roundabout or the traffic circle. Europe appreciates that they allow the rapid flow of traffic at intersections without the need for a traffic light, while Americans see them as confusing and dangerous. Statistically, they are much safer than traffic lights as Eno realized. The only ones most people know about in the US is Columbus Circle in New York City that he designed and had built or the one around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

After a long and fulfilling life, Eno died in 1945. He was appropriately lauded as the creator of all things traffic. But there’s one interesting item about Eno that might surprise you.

Not only did the Father of Traffic Safety never own a car, but he also never learned to drive.

On a History Theory

During a video work meeting recently, one of the moderators shared a video of a person using a pay phone. We were all struck with the fact that those things have pretty much gone from the landscape in much of the western world, an entire segment of the communication industry replaced by more modern methods of human interaction. Ask the harness makers from 120 years ago or the carriage companies from the same period about becoming obsolete. People are now being replaced in many areas of the manufacturing sector by robotics (and even in the logistics sector as well). Certainly, air travel, cell phones, and automated factories mark the modern world.

And that’s the way of the world, I suppose. Except maybe not. Let’s go backk (insert echo sound effect here in your head), backkk, bakkkk. We are really talking about innovations in three major areas of life throughout time: Communication, transportation, and manufacturing. It’s interesting to note that the ground-shaking changes in these three areas happened in an incredibly short time historically.

For most of recorded history, man traveled at the speed of, well, man. Ok, horses did speed up travel considerably (or camels or whatever beast a person rode in that culture). But, for the most part, people moved at the speed of people moving at speed. That means a person who walks at a normal pace could move about 3 miles per hour or 5 kilometers per hour. That was the pace of life. And, unlike what the western film genre tells you, horses couldn’t run for hours at a time. Most of the time, they walked not much faster than men did. Rivers were great ways to get around (and oceans, too), but when the current couldn’t pull a boat upstream, horses (or again whatever animal) did that work, too.

And people throughout history did indeed learn to communicate more rapidly than by foot. Birds where trained to carry messages. Signals (by fire or flag) also sped this up. But both were iffy and dependent on weather/visibility and limited to a small area compared to sending communications intercontinentally.

What about manufacturing. For much of history, mills that ground corn or even cut wood had to be built along rivers that powered the wheels that moved the machinery. True, some mills (think Holland and France, for example) were wind powered, but, again, humans were at the mercy of the breezes. So, if you needed consistent power, you’d have to have a water source.

So, what changed?

Well, according to historian Douglas T. Miller, the modern world wasn’t born anytime this century. Or the last one, either. No, Miller said that the modern world, especially modern America, was born in the relatively short window of 1820 to 1850. That seems crazy to have been so long ago (for us, 200 years), but that is incredibly recent in the long view of the history of mankind.

Miller argues that while steam engines had been used in factories and in manufacturing before 1820, it wasn’t until that year that the number steam powered plants equaled the number of water driven plants. By 1830, steam was well in the lead and never looked back. While water was still needed, factories didn’t need a constant supply of water running all the time and therefore they didn’t need to be along streams any more. 1826 saw the first practical use of steam applied to a train and the beginning of the wide use of steam powered boats on American waters. Suddenly, man, who, all of his existence, had been limited to travel at 3-5 miles per hour, now could go 40, 50, or more. That was mind-blowing to people at the time. And, it was 1844 that Samuel Morse sent the message, “What hath God wrought?” by telegraph, a message that was received miles away almost instantly.

And, what’s more, the airplane, the cell phone, and the automated factory are all extensions of those original creations and applications. In fact, Miller says that the revolution in those 30 years to society is greater than any modern revolution we’ve experienced.

That means a person who lived in those 30 years saw more fundamental change in transportation, communication, and manufacturing than any of us ever will.