I am a German intern working with the Macalester Groveland District Council - in St. Paul.
The Macalester Groveland neighborhood is researching ways to address traffic safety issues on their residential streets.
We have heard good things about the work in Minneapolis on this issue and are looking for information about what other communities have done to increase community awareness on traffic safety issues and slow (calm) traffic through neighborhoods.
I would recommend the book "Street Reclaiming" by David Engwicht and his website at www.lesstraffic.com as a pair of gooding starting points.
Minneapolis has made some spotty efforts at traffic calming, with limited success in those few places it has been tried. For the most part, my impression of Minneapolis, Hennepin County and Minnesota State traffic and road planners is that of a very car-centric ideology, with a constant goal of maximizing the amount of traffic a street can handle and minimizing the delay drivers experience, regardless of the consequences to the neighborhood the road passes through. Despite that, some citizen groups have managed to get move things in the direction they want on occasion.
When I lived in the East Calhoun neighborhood, we (ECCO) were able to rebuild west 31st street to be a boulevard with center landscaped islands after many years of effort. Doing so, along with the addition of a couple more stop signs, did slow the traffic down and make for a slightly quieter, safer neighborhood.
There are a number of places where neighbors have managed to get through-traffic stopped by cutting intersections in half, making them into 2 turns, one each for the 2 pairs of roads meeting, or 2 dead-ends and 1 turn, thus making the intersection no longer useful for driving through on any one street. (As it is hard to explain this clearly, ask if it does not make sense.)
The Fulton and Lynnhurst neighborhoods tried to calm the traffic on 50th street using a variety of methods a couple years ago, including yard signs, bumper stickers and more. It was deemed successful while in operation, but has made no lasting change. You might still be able to contact the "Fulton-Lynnhurst Neighbors for Safe Driving Task Force" at 612-922-3106 for more information about this effort. You can find documentation at the Fulton website here:
http://www.fultonneighborhood.org/trafficplan.htm
Willkommen zu den Twin Cities.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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