When Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a 6,000-pound Ford F-150 Lightning into a dense crowd on Bourbon Street this month, the resulting carnage was one of those things that writer Rebecca Solnit has called “shocking but unsurprising.” Like so many things in the news these days — the Los Angeles wildfires being the latest — this kind of deadly violence is both predictable and uniquely tragic. I hate getting used to these events.
That said, two details of this incident caught my attention. First, the assailant used a massive Ford F-150 Lightning, a three-ton electric truck with a high front end, a trend these days in dangerous vehicle design. The second was that the city of New Orleans had, years before, installed expensive retractable bollards in reaction to a deadly 2016 vehicle attack in France. American planners and politicians had done the right thing to prevent a tragedy, but ironically failed to maintain their defenses. The bollards had been neglected for years, brought down in part by cheap plastic Mardi Gras beads.
Bollards background
The attack on the French Quarter, America’s foremost urban treasure, made me stop to reconsider the lowly bollards that could have saved lives. It turns out that bollards are surprisingly controversial for what amounts to the simplest possible piece of urban infrastructure. They’re not more than posts that can withstand a major impact, especially motorized vehicles, but it’s precisely their inflexibility that has long made them a sticking point for many engineers.
The standard bollard costs around $700 to manufacture and install (at least according to one estimate). That’s very affordable for a modern capital expense, which is probably one reason why they’re common in many European cities. For example, Amsterdam has long been famous for its iconic (and somewhat suggestive) Amsterdammertje bollards, which have lined the sidewalks and street-level canals for centuries. Over time, the city has been removing them in favor of grade-separated curbs, but some tens of thousands remain.
Fancy retractable ones, like those dormant in the French Quarter, can cost over $10,000 and require annual maintenance. They’re used only for special occasions and places, like surrounding the city of London landmarks or in James Bond films.
For years, I’ve been rather obsessed with bollards thanks to the semi-popular World Bollard Association social media account, which has 200,000 followers. It regularly posts bollard-related incidents from around the world, demonstrating a fascinating technological obstinacy. Compared to anything you’ll find in a public works budget, in the right context they represent an amazing investment payoff for traffic calming and safety.
That’s why it’s strange that, officially, bollards are not in vogue in Twin Cities governments. Plastic bollards (or flexible posts) that you see near bike lanes are much more common on our streets, but have also become a rather dubious technology. Talking to engineers over the years, they often hem and haw about using them. While they can serve as a short-term traffic calming technique, they’re not cheap and (as any observer well knows) are prone to being destroyed by wayward drivers.
A few years ago, I was told that St. Paul had a de facto policy of not using flexi-posts anymore — endlessly replacing them can be rather expensive — but lately they’ve begun to re-appear in my neighborhood. They provide welcome traffic calming, but remain symbolic protection at best.
Real bollards are much rarer and, weirdly enough, more common in the Twin Cities’ private sector. Companies that seem to know the actuarial value of their infrastructure deploy them more literally than urban planners. For example, the privately designed park that shelters the giant St. Paul loon sculpture has an array of fancy bollards at its vanguard. (In fact, one of them has already proven its metal, after being hit by a wildly wayward vehicle.) You see them, too, outside sports stadiums, or protecting buildings with exposed infrastructure. They cluster especially around drive-thrus, keeping ATMs, pneumatic tubes, or the menu speakers sfe from their customers.
In the public sector, they’re not currently in favor. Apart from federal office buildings, put there since the terrible 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, you don’t find them much in use. I reached out to a variety of urban actors to ask why but didn’t get many clear answers. According to a city spokesperson, Minneapolis does not have an official bollard policy.
“[We] are focused on implementing those actions, including proactive safety treatments on ‘high injury streets,’ supporting safe driving speeds through street design, and piloting traffic safety cameras,” the spokesperson said. “[However] the current Vision Zero Action Plan does not include an action for creating a policy on solid bollards, although we may consider that in the future.”
It’s a similar story for Metro Transit, which typically limits its preventive infrastructure to hardened centerline treatments. Meanwhile, MnDOT’s official policy is to “avoid installing bollards whenever possible.” According to the Bicycle Facility Design Manual, they represent dangerous obstacles for cyclists. At the same time, they can be quite important. St. Paul’s downtown bikeway has a few bollards to demarcate the trail from the street, though not enough to prevent delivery vans from parking on at the bikeway nearly every day.
Bollards can save lives
As the threat of vehicular violence has increased over the last few years, official allergies toward bollards look misplaced. As vehicles grow larger, more powerful, and with higher front ends, everyday streets are more dangerous. Places like bus stops, schools or any sidewalk with a regular concentration of people could use a few tasteful-but-firm obstacles to slow traffic and protect the vulnerable.
For example, a few weeks ago, a speeding driver hit another car on Emerson Avenue North in Minneapolis. The crash threw the vehicle directly into a busy bus stop, killing two people and injuring three more. This is exactly the kind of thing that well-placed bollards might prevent. In an era with increasingly dangerous drivers, Metro Transit should consider bollards around bus stops along with other technologies that might better protect the vulnerable.
Then there are the more obvious public spaces where bollards might thrive — parks, plazas and the like. Retractable bollards should be a matter of course on any main streets that regularly host events and should be maintained so that they work at all times. (Hopkins did this with their Main Street years ago, installing gates that can be easily lowered.) If Nicollet Mall is closed to buses, hosting daily public gatherings like farmers markets or sidewalk cafés, retractable bollards that prevent drivers from scaling the sidewalks seems like a necessary first step.
Another silver lining of a bollard-happy future: it could facilitate more public festivals and parades, which have become saddled with high security costs, leading to the cancellation of these socially important events. Retractable bollards like the ones that should have been working in NOLA would turn any street into a more protected space for gatherings like the (recently moved) Uptown Art Fair, replacing expensive police permits with everyday technology that operates 24 hours a day. That’s important in an era where public gatherings are disappearing.
So consider the bollard, the humble pawn of the urban landscape. In a world where vehicular physics have escalated, and mass homicide has become all too common, it only makes sense to better protect our sidewalks and streets.
Editor’s note: The paragraph describing Metro Transit’s use of bollards has been updated to clarify that the agency typically but not fully limits preventive infrastructure to hardened centerline treatments.
Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.
