Re-thinking the road infrastructure for new urban mobility needs

Urban road infrastructure, for a long time, had been designed and built on the basis of theoretical and practical knowledge, focused on the urban functions development and motorized traffic requirements. As a matter of fact, vulnerable users’ functions were considered as an optional or a secondary objective. Nowadays, a different paradigm of urban mobility is establishing, with particular attention to the safety and environmental performances of infrastructures. The main subject to propose is to overcome a standard-based design in favour of a needs-driven design, with the aim to balance the conflicting characteristics and expectations of the various traffic components. Some examples can be proposed, at various level of scale and/or for typical infrastructure. Various situations are presented, in the paper, with the aim to discuss how the infrastructures could be reconsidered and redefined, in order to become safer and more effective for all the traffic components.