Posted on 11/09/2007 8:41:21 AM PST by jim_trent
I just read a summary report about a book called “Road Diet Handbook: Setting Trends for Livable Streets”. This is the latest fad that is bringing traffic circles, bike lanes, and speed bumps to your town under the label of “traffic calming”. Of course, such things don’t “calm” traffic. Neither do they “calm” the driver. Each thing is planned to force the drivers onto other streets, into mass transportation, or to skip the trip altogether.
Road Diets are the latest incarnation of their diabolical plan. The plan is to take existing streets and reduce the number of lanes. Does that sound stupid? Well follow along. The examples given take a 4-lane (two lanes in each direction) street, remove the center island (if there is one), and change it to 2-bike paths (one each way), 2-diving lanes (one each way) and a single, center “chicken lane” (that is the center lane that goes both directions and is used for left turning traffic).
There are several case studies in the report of where this kind of change was made. In each case study, the Average Daily Traffic (ADT) before the change was listed. In each case, I was NOT able to find the ADT afterward. Very curious. In most examples, the before vs after average speed was reduced. Both numbers were listed. However, it does not take a traffic engineer to know that reducing the number of lanes for thru-traffic AND reducing the average speed will reduce the ADT. There is nothing in this report on where the rest of the traffic went (most likely, to adjacent side streets – usually in residential areas). In each and every case, they do mention that a “livability survey” was conducted before and after and in every case, the “after” livability on the street was superior. I get the impression that this is the only thing that is important to the authors. There was no indication that people on adjacent streets were also given a livability survey.
Anyway, this is the latest fad that will be coming to your city in 5 to 10 years. The groundwork is being laid right now. I have said in the past that it is too late to stop traffic circles and speed bumps. The groundwork for them was laid 10 to 15 years ago. It is probably too late to stop Red Light cameras. They have been pushed for the last 5 to 10 years and despite, occasional setbacks, the number of them is steadily increasing every year. However, the anti-car crowd will not stop with these. The number of ideas they come up with to force us out of cars onto mass transportation is amazing.
You’re being unfair to the program.
People are trying to bring back walkable, and more intimate cities and towns. What’s wrong with that?
Excessive road building destroyed many cities. These people are just trying to undue the damage.
Hey, maybe it will even be safe one day for kids to play and bike outside without having to worry so much about being hit by a car.
Ask the police and fire fighters what they think of speed bumps, traffic circles and other impediments to smooth traffic flow.
All being from the home of the traffic circle invention, New Jersey dirvers know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and that everything in between - includung traffic lights - is involved in a conspiracy to slow you down.
why don’t we dig up all the pavement and go back to dirt & gravel roads?won’t need speed bumps then.
I’ve been held hostage by traffic circles.
This should be amusing.
Bike lanes in the CENTER of the road?? What brainless bozo thought this one up??? They must be trying to discourage bicycling, too.
Schuykill expressway. Lets reduce it to two lanes each way and add 4 bike lanes so philly will be more liveable.
They did this in a University Area I lived in a few years ago...
Within months, several village-area business had closed, because of the reduced traffic passing by. A friend that owns a building in the area says rents have not recovered...
It makes no sense, for example, to have a residential street designed for a safe driving speed of 45+ miles per hour if the regulatory speed limit for a residential neighborhood is 25 mph.
Go to any new residential development -- especially in newer metropolitan areas -- and you'll see how well this kind of thought process works.
Roundabout.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
I don’t remember that one. Did you make a thread on it?
>>>Go to any new residential development — especially in newer metropolitan areas — and you’ll see how well this kind of thought process works.
Ah yes, Smart Growth.
http://www.locationnj.com/Smart_Growth_Transit_Villages.asp
Smart Growth Transit Villages
More on Transit Villages posted in this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1776511/posts
NEW JERSEY FLOATS DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES ON CLEAN WATER FUNDS
Personally I wish we had more bike lanes here.
I’ll be the round about
The words will make you out ’n’ out
You change the day your way
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
In and out the valley
The music dance and sing
They make the children really ring
I spend the day your way
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
In and out the valley
Chorus
In and around the lake
Mountains come out of the sky and they
Stand there
One mile over we’ll be there and we’ll see
You
Ten true summers we’ll be there and
Laughing too
Twenty four before my love you’ll see I’ll be
There with you
I will remember you
Your silhouette will charge the view
Of distance atmosphere
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
Even in the valley
Chorus
Along the drifting cloud the eagle searching
Down on the land
Catching the swirling wind the sailor sees
The rim of the land
The eagle’s dancing wings create as weather
Spins out of hand
Go closer hold the land feel partly no more
Than grains of sand
We stand to lose all time a thousand answers
By in our hand
Next to your deeper fears we stand
Surrounded by a million years
I’ll be the roundabout
The words will make you out ’n’ out
I’ll be the roundabout
The words will make you out ’n’ out
Chorus
I’ll be the roundabout
The words will make you out ’n’ out
I spend the day your way
Call it morning driving thru the sound and
In and out the valley
Chorus
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Kids shouldn’t play in the streets. Roads are for getting one place to another as easy and as safe as possible. Making thngs harder and less safe is WRONG.
I visited Gettysburg a few years ago and hired a guide. He showed us how the Confederates came from the west and into town on the first day. Then they unexplicably were held up for 12 hours. 12 hours that the Union used to strengthen their defenses around the cemetery.
I knew exactly what held them up when I saw the traffic circle in the middle of town. In addition, it was holding up car traffic that very day.
The source of the situation is extensive city planning in the 30s. All the residential over here, all the commercial over there, all the industrial way over there. Everybody has to travel, and the next step is to remove public transportation so everybody is in their cars along with half their net worth.
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