A/B Street

Ever been stuck in traffic on a bus, wondering why is there legal street parking instead of a dedicated bus lane? A/B Street is a project to plan, simulate, and communicate visions for making cities friendlier to people walking, biking, and taking public transit. We create software to simulate traffic, edit streets and intersections, plan bike networks, create low-traffic neighborhoods, and educate the public about 15-minute neighborhoods through games. The project works anywhere in the world, thanks to OpenStreetMap.

• Run it on your web browser, Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, or read all instructions
• build from source

As of January 2024, development of the tools above has slowed down, because newer tools are being developed in other repositories. Please also check out:

• Severance Snape to explore how far walking routes detour to cross big roads
• od2net to calculate the most important roads to prioritize for cycling

Videos

• Alpha release trailer
• Presentations

Documentation

• User guide
• Technical
  • Developer guide
  • How the traffic simulation works
  • Intersection geometry
• Project
  • Roadmap
  • Getting involved
  • Accomplishments & challenges

Project mission

We amplify the efforts of individuals and advocacy groups who campaign to transition cities away from private motor vehicles. We believe in transparent and reproducible analysis, so all of our work is open source and based on public data. We believe everybody should have a voice in shaping their city, so our software aims to be easy to use.

Why not leave city planning to professionals? People are local experts on the small slice of the city they interact with daily -- the one left turn lane that always backs up or a certain set of poorly timed walk signals. Laura Adler writes:

"Only with simple, accessible simulation programs can citizens become active generators of their own urban visions, not just passive recipients of options laid out by government officials."

Existing urban planning software is either proprietary or hard to use. A/B Street strives to be highly accessible, by being a fun, engaging game. See here for more guiding principles.

Credits

Core team:

• Dustin Carlino (dabreegster@gmail.com)
• Yuwen Li (UX)
• Michael Kirk

See full credits

Contact dabreegster@gmail.com or follow @CarlinoDustin for updates.