My posting on traffic calming included this snippet: 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?).
To which Gary Hoover replied I do not agree that cars need to move as quickly as possible on major streets. I believe that we need to reduce car traffic in order to make all of our streets safer, to reduce pollution and oil dependency, and to allow for greater diversity of vehicles. To expand on this further: If we make major streets bigger, they will simply become congested with even more cars. If we increase speeds on major streets, we are likely to see more car crashes and more serious car crashes. This is more dangerous and costly than maintaining moderate speeds. The best way to help cars move through the streets more quickly is to reduce the number of cars on the streets. The best way to do that is to engage in a long-term comprehensive program to educate the public and to increase transit options, small urban ZEV options, and walking and biking options. My response to Gary: Fine - I support your efforts to get people onto bicycles and other transit. However, traffic calming is not the way to do it. Traffic calming may decrease the number of cars to a small extent, by making driving such a pain in the neck that people don't travel as much. But creating even more frustration to driving will not contribute to safety -- the slightly fewer cars will be more than offset by more accidents because of people trying to get around the "calming" features, and their diversions to side streets. I'm not actually arguing to make streets bigger, but to keep them from shrinking, which is generally the aim of traffic calming. In any case, the suggestion that larger streets will not relieve some congestion is absurd. It seems to have become a matter of faith to many people that building more road space will not relieve congestion, because any roads one builds will somehow be filled by additional cars. Their evidence is that Atlanta still has congestion after they've built a bunch of new highways to handle their rapidly increasing population. But where would they be if they hadn't built these roads? Probably similar to the grid-locked Twin Cities. What I've noticed in the last 20 years is the opposite effect -- increased population with no new roads has increased congestion dramatically. How come 20 years ago we didn't have the level of cars we have now? Maybe the number of cars depends on something other than the road space? I know the standard answer to this is mass transit, but we certainly didn't have better mass transit 20 years ago, but somehow the roads were less congested. Jeff Carlson wrote: Good traffic calming reorganizes the lanes to make travel safer for bikes and pedestrians. A well-designed street will not make motorists choose another route, but will encourage them to slow down and drive safely. Mark Anderson reply: A good trick. Let me know how this is done. I've never heard of such a design. Jeff Carlson wrote: On the contrary, the most dangerous streets in the city are the ones that allow cars to fly through neighborhoods. A few examples are Blaisdell, First Ave, 28th St. and 26th St. All of these are one-ways designed exclusively to "move traffic quickly" and are extremely dangerous for that reason. Accidents on Blaisdell through Whittier are quotidian, as evidenced by the regular reappearance of glass shards on the pavement at nearly every intersection Mark Anderson: I'd be curious to find out the statistics for accidents on 26th St., 28th St., Park Ave. and Portland Ave. in comparison to other streets. Of course these statistics need to be "per car that passes through," because I'm sure there are a lot of accidents there just because that's where most of the cars are. Does anyone know where we could get these? Jeff wrote: As for fences to separate bicycles and pedestrians from cars, I'm not sure that is a practical solution, though I'd be happy to hear you elaborate on your idea. Mark: I was simply thinking of fences between the road and people's houses, so playing kids are safe. Bicyclists concerned for their safety should generally use side streets, unless they have a designated bike path (the Park and Portland ones seem to work well). 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
