I must admit that I nearly cried when I read this message, for joy that is.
It was an excellent post and I am right on with many of the key points.
Streets, even primarily residential ones, are, in the final analysis, public
rights-of-way and not mechanisms solely provided for the purpose of allowing
individual home owners access to their driveway. Nor are they maintained as
reserved spill-over parking facilities for people living directly in front.
And, while it is commonly said that residents should 'take ownership' of the
streets I think a better call to arms would be for residents become better
custodians of the streets they live. There is a very real, and not just
semantic, difference between the two ideas.
I do believe that there are instances where circulation control is
necessary: to stop serious speeding or cut-through traffic problems,
cruising, drug trafficking or other crimes (around Chicago Lake Liquors or
at 1st Ave S and 28th St E come to mind) and even to enhance the pedestrian
appeal of a commercial area. These interventions can take the form of either
calming or diversion. Calming reduces vehicle speed and may, if traffic
conditions allow, even reduce travel lanes but still lets you go through.
Diversion, like that mess south of Lake, east of Lyndale, does pretty much
what it says and does not allow you to go through.
Done intelligently calming can reduce excessive road speeds while
maintaining necessary capacity ('taking the pledge' 50th Ave in south
Minneapolis is crying out for something like this). Pointless applications
bug me. I happen to live near uptown in the thick edge of the wedge and
travel the nearby neighborhoods regularly. In my travels I have noticed many
patches of utterly useless raised asphalt (were there really once signs that
said 'Hump'?), as well as a few positively goofy round-about like things. It
seems to be straight out of the NRP manual in a chapter entitled 'What to do
after you have plastered the borders of the neighborhood with cute little
welcome signs to create a sense of place.'
Diversion is a more radical solution and should be restricted to serious
instances. Diversion for traffic reasons should be viewed as a serious trade
off between the inconvenience faced by residents suffering the problem
versus the rights of all residents to convenient, flexible access to public
rights-of-way. Diversion in the name of crime suppression can be effective
but it simply treats a symptom. Granted, sometimes symptoms need to be
treated but pushing it down in one place merely means that it pops up in
another. Restricting access in this way also begins the gated community
phenomena.
Our grid street system is designed so that people naturally gravitate toward
collectors and arterials because it is the only way to get anywhere
reasonably quickly. Basically speaking it is hard to get very far if you
have to stop every 660 feet and cross arterials at uncontrolled
intersections. In those relatively rare instances where the system doesn't
function, then calming or diversion should be pursued - but every
intersection does not need to be throated, every car that passes through is
not a crisis, and every street section does not need multiple humps, bumps
or tables.
Geoff Batzel
Ward 10
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Barbara Nelson
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 11:10 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Streets, traffic & neighborhood boundaries
Call me insensitive, but I think traffic calming has now gone too far
and has become
the triumph of the few over the many, and I am fed up with it.
We need to have viable east-west routes across the
city from border to border so that we CAN patronize merchants in the
city. It's getting so that it's easier to go to the mall of Gargantua
or to Southdale than to get to downtown, uptown, St. Anthony Main, etc.
It's bad enough to have about six blocks of Seward protesting that cars
and trucks are driving on "their" street, but now at least one
neighborhood is
using traffic calming methods on a major thoroughfare. SUre it's
attractive and quaint, but I thought street were supposed to be
practical too.
Whose "brilliant" idea was it to redesign Franklin Ave in the traffic
calming style through the east end of Phillips? That is a major
commercial street and thoroughfare across the city. Maybe the merchants
believe that if traffic slows down enough some of it might actually pull
over and patronize their shops?
Here is my plight, as one example: my dog had a medical emergency and
the cancer
specialist who is treating her is in Kenwood. I'll bet that little
stretch in Phillips cost me five minutes that could have meant death for
my dog (I'll spare you the gory details, but what if it had been my
grandchild?).
The alternative thoroughfares would be 26th Street on the
way over and 28th on the way back. I tried 26th last week and
it too was slow, crowded with traffic especially around Chicago, and I
counted 6 drivers who flauted the law, and 5 more who were traveling 10
mph under the speed limit. Not to mention that to use it I had to
travel about 1 mile more, polluting the atmosphere more than necessary.
I-94 would also have been an option except it was backed up because it
was rush hour. Exceeding the speed limit and weaving lanes of traffic
to get around the "Sunday drivers" is NOT an option even in an
emergency, IMHO. Neither is racing through residential streets, and I
say those who do these things should be prosecuted under existing law.
I believe the greater good for the greater number is the ethic we should
follow re the use of roads. Too bad if you had the illusion of a quiet
country lane meandering past your home. You only have that guarantee if
you buy on a parkway. Every city needs major collectors and arterials
spaced frequently through the city for many reasons, but basically for
mobility and quick emergency response times.
Lest you think I have never experienced living on a suddenly busy
street and thus could "never" understand the misery that brings one to
install traffic calming, my home is located on 27th Av. S. which at one
time was a main
drag with lots of cars, pickups, semi-trucks and buses. You learn to
live with it. You fence your yard if you have small children and teach
them not to play on the front sidewalk or in the street.
For some reason, most traffic is now diverted onto 26th Ave, but we
still get
buses going by in both directions every 20 minutes from before sunrise
to the wee hours, and yes they are smelly and loud, but hey, this is the
city and people need transit -- it's got to go somewhere and they picked
my street, which I feel is pretty lucky for me because it's the 7 line
which can link one up with almost every other bus line in the city.
I say the 26th St. crossing over of Hiawatha is WONDERFUL, and we ought
to extend 28th St. too. Before 26th opened, getting over 24th was
downright dangerous at times and the only other entrance into Seward
from the west was on Franklin.
Seward felt almost like a gated community,
and although it was peaceful from a traffic standpoint, it certainly
wasn't the city experience. I'm as grateful as the next person that
Seward has been on the upswing for the last 15 years or so and that
there are far fewer "bums" (this is what we called them when I was
growing up, I don't know the p.c. term, so I apologize in advance if
that word offends anyone) peeing in my hedge and fewer beer
cans and broken pints to pick up than in prior years.
As grateful as I am for more civil behavior on the sidewalks over here,
I don't think we
need to go so far as to deter traffic on legit thoroughfares. I'd like
to go on record for extending 28th AND using that as the neighborhood
boundary. Lots of parks have major roads running through them: Como
Park, Minnehaha (although with the reroute that road will now be in a
tunnel) to mention only a few. The road doesn't "ruin" the park -- the
two parks I mention are showcases, for Pete's sake.
I'm not out to disparage traffic calming on bonified residential streets
-- if it's needed; for example, it seems to work in Uptown. But gee
whiz folks, if you live on one of the few uninterrupted boundary to
boundary streets, it just inevitable that it will eventually be used for
cross city traffic.
Can you just look up from your own self interest
and share that public space with your fellow citizens? In the name of
safety and efficiency? Emergencies and heavy volume require both. I
wonder if the fire trucks will lose precious minutes
or run over pedestrians as they try to naviage the 1 lane, stop sign
thick, elitist road through the Phillips fiefdom?
Barbara Nelson
Seward
~~
Barbara Nelson
EMAIL [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.
— Akira Kurosawa
