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Yield Street

LOC-YLD-07
Recommended Local

Yield Street

A Local street narrow enough that two vehicles cannot pass without one yielding, using the street's width itself as a traffic-calming device.

Related Media

The items below come from outside the Commonway System, external videos, podcasts, and articles related to this page's topic, not part of the guidebook itself.

Aligned

Are Streets Too Complicated Now?

City Beautiful

Asks whether today's proliferation of lines, signals, and lane types on streets is overcomplication or a needed response to modern demands, a question that runs directly through CS's Element-scale catalog and the density-tiered Corridor retrofit paths this video is tagged to.

Typical at: Suburban Compact

Rural and Urban are edge cases. Undeveloped and Core are unlikely pairings, since local street volumes at Core density typically exceed what yield control can handle safely.

Speed and modal hierarchy

Design speed & speed limit

[SPEED LIMIT 20]
Follows the Local default: 20 mph hard maximum, no exceptions.

See Design Speed & Speed Limits.

Modal hierarchy

Pedestrian> Bicycle> Vehicle> Transit> Freight
Marked as needing confirmation rather than fully locked.

Design notes

This pattern only functions where traffic volume is genuinely low. It thins out toward Urban and Core, where local street volumes typically outgrow what a shared, yield-controlled width can safely absorb.1

Living Street / Woonerf (LOC-LSW-06) (the reciprocal pattern, sharing width-as-calming-device but going further to treat vehicles as guests)

References

  1. Precedent-based NACTO, Urban Street Design Guide, "Yield Street."