Jeff Carlson wrote: > Your harrowing bicycle experience in Uptown is > repeated all over the city on the roads that remain to > be traffic-calmed. Fortunately, traffic calming is > improving bicycle and pedestrian safety all over the > city. > > For those unfamiliar with the term, traffic calming in > our context usually entails safety measures on streets > that have four lanes of traffic and little space for > bikes and pedestrians, such as Hennepin and Lyndale. > Car traffic is clearly designated in two lanes, making > space for bikes on either side. On commercial > streets, turn lanes and bump-outs can be used as space > allows, as on Franklin Avenue east of Chicago. Other > visual stimuli encourage drivers to slow down, > including trees, pedestrian level street lighting, > benches, and cooler paving materials such as brick. > > No Minneapolis street is wide enough for four lanes > and parking on both sides. Lyndale and Hennepin would > be well served with two lanes of through traffic, a > center turn lane and a designated lane for bikes.
Mark answer: Arrrgh! More kudos for the wonders of traffic calming. I've never seen any traffic calming that improved safety city-wide. When you cut out lanes on a street, the traffic merely moves somewhere else. Then you've got someone on another street complaining about all the cars. The safest plan is to allow traffic to move as quickly as possible on the major streets, and spend the money on keeping pedestrians and cars separated (maybe put up fences?). That'll keep a lot of the traffic off the more residential side streets. And allow bicycles a safer ride on those side streets also. Mark Anderson Bancroft _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
