> Mark Anderson writes: > > 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. > Jeff Carlson replies:
The problem with this rhetoric is that is focuses > exclusively on the needs of drivers. A more wholistic > approach considers the pedestrian first, since the act > of walking as transportation contributes positively to > the urban environment whereas each automobile trip > does the opposite. Therefore, each automobile on the > road "frustrates" the pedestrian by spewing out toxic > fumes and threatening her safety. My reply back: Isn't the whole point of traffic calming focusing on the behavior of the driver? My response was that drivers will not respond in the desired manner to traffic calming. Your "wholistic" approach is irrelevant to the discussion. Jeff Carlson continues: > Traffic calming is just one cipher of the phenomenon > sweeping Minneapolis of reclaiming the city from the > flawed automobile design and function which have > reigned since the times of urban renewal. > > By itself, traffic calming would do little to change > transportation behavior, but it is powerful when > paired with the positive changes in the sector five > transit plan, the extension of the Midtown Greenway to > Hiawatha, light rail, infill housing, and the > elimination of minimum parking requirements. > > Car culture is a dinosaur of last century. Cars have > devastated our cities with smog, congestion and ugly > drive-through plastic architecture. Our reliance on > fossil fuels has brought us to the brink of war, for > the second time in a decade. Mark reply: Well this is a dinosaur that will survive long after you and I are rotting in our graves. Even in Minneapolis, land of the car haters, how many people would give up their autos even if they had perfect mass transit between their home and work? Not many. That's because cars represent freedom -- to go anywhere you want and anytime. While we are are buffetted from the Right by politicians endeavoring to take away our civil rights as an overreaction to 9/11, we are similarly attacked from the Left by those who want to remove our means of individual transportation. Luckily the car haters have much less power than the Rightists at this point. Instead of all this rhetoric about the evil of driving, why not work on solving the down sides of cars. You'll never get most of the people out of their cars without a general economic collapse, one that reduces their choices to eating or driving. What we need to solve in the next century are alternative means of powering cars, emission reduction, and safety. Safety is the only issue appropriate to this forum. The ultimate way to solve the safety problem is to put all roads underground or overhead. We can't afford that right now. The second option is to keep cars separated from pedestrians as much as possible, as well as provide as few distractions as possible for drivers, so they can concentrate on guiding their heavy missiles safely. We've done a good job of this on limited access highways like 35W. The through streets like Lyndale are more difficult, because we can't afford to create a large separation from the city for all those streets. The next best solution, in my opinion, is to build fences between residential areas and through streets. Pedestrians will only go on the streets when they need to cross. Traffic calming tries to erase the separation between cars and the city, which is a recipe for more accidents, not less. 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
