Posted on 08/04/2004 5:18:22 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
FREEDOM, Calif. -- Traffic calming is not just physically hazardous. It harms our way of life as well.
Most people have experienced nightmares at some point in their lives. One that’s quite common is to dream you are trying to get somewhere, but can't.
One version of the nightmare goes like this:
You are driving home from a very long day at work. The freeway is normally congested at this hour because few improvements have been made to increase traffic flow in decades even though the population of your town has grown significantly. Unfortunately for you today, the traffic is virtually gridlocked because there has been an accident and the clogged system cannot cope with the additional burden of a closed lane and police activity.
Never mind. In your dream, you decide to try another route. It’s a little out of your way, but it heads in the general direction of home, so you feel it’s worth a try.
However, this too is a mistake. As soon as you exit to the surface street you begin to encounter unfamiliar markings on the roadbed, such as a super-wide bicycle lane or left-turn lanes that are wider than the regular lane. It feels like you are being squeezed into a narrower and narrower space as you drive along, because extra wide medians with curbs now replace the double yellow lines.
When you get to one intersection, you notice that the sidewalk at the corner bumps out into the driving lane of the road, making a right hand turn difficult. Farther down the road, a circular planter fills the center of a four-way intersection. Again you must slow down almost to a stop in order to navigate around the hazard and then continue on.
Speed bump hazards are placed indiscriminately in the roadbed. These bumps are so high your speed must be reduced to a level drastically below the speed limit so that the car can pass over it without damage or without harming your passengers.
The way home has become shockingly stressful. You decide to stop at a deli for food, since you're now delayed past your normal dinnertime. When you get there, something looks odd. You used to be able to park parallel to the curb, but now there seem to be some planters with high cement curbs in the place where your parking spot used to be. They sure look nice with flowering trees and some low growing greenery, and they appear to be spaced just far enough apart for a car to fit between them. But you soon learn there isn’t quite enough space to park your modestly-sized car.
Powerless to achieve your goal, you give up on the deli. The goal is now to navigate through the one-way and dead-end streets, and you fear you will never get home. This "nightmare" is reality for people all over America.
What you discovered in your attempt to return home were roadbed hazards, euphemistically called “traffic calming devices” by government roadwork agencies. The devices, the lane reductions, the planted medians, the corner bump-outs, the cement roundabouts, speed bumps and the chicanes occupying former parking spaces are all different types of hazardous obstacles -- whose sole purpose is to delay you or discourage you from using your automobile. They are designed to severely restrict traffic flow and add considerable delay to travel times.
These hazards are finding their way onto the streets of our towns and cities with the blessing of most of our elected officials.
What motivates our local representatives to deliberately install permanent roadway hazards in public roads? What authority do our representatives have that grants them the power to make our roads dangerous to cars traveling at the legally posted speed limit?
The purpose of our Constitution is to guarantee the right of the citizen to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If the duty of our elected politicians is to defend our Constitution and our rights, then they must also defend our right to travel in pursuit of legitimate business or pleasure. When officials from our cities and towns employ roadbed hazards to make legitimate travel a time-consuming and perilous endeavor, they are -- in essence -- responsible for the corruption of our American system of government.
By constructing hazards that restrict speeds to below the posted speed limits local politicians have stepped over the line. They have ceased to defend the fundamental right of citizens to travel freely around this nation and, instead, are intentionally imposing oppressive control on our freedom of mobility. But by what authority?
If politicians determine that roadbed hazards should be constructed to slow the speed of drivers below the posted speed limit, aren’t they implying by their actions that all drivers are speeders, since all drivers will be slowed by these hazards? If our elected politicians think that all drivers break the law, and that all drivers must be punished, then it follows that they do not support the Natural Law perspective on which our system of government is based -- namely, that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
To support the idea that all drivers must be restricted because all drivers are speeders, our politicians must rely on a different legal perspective -- one that does not spring from our unalienable rights. This perspective implies that all rights spring from the government, and that the government can restrict our freedom of mobility, in order to prevent any lawbreaking that might occur.
The origins of this perspective, sometimes called the Precautionary Principle, can be found in the democratic socialist system that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s. In this case, the government is taking an interventionist measure to justify its perception that drivers must be slowed and discouraged from using public roads. They are attempting to prevent the potential risk that a driver might drive too fast, or that too many drivers might drive down a particular street.
The idea that local governing officials presume they must act to prevent the potential risk that you will violate the law, rather than allowing you to be responsible for driving safely and allowing you unrestricted passage over public roadways, is wholly contrary to our Constitution and the American system. More troubling still is the fact that these officials would identify with a perspective founded in the tenets of German Socialism in the mid-Twentieth century.
Alarmingly, more and more council members and supervisors adopt traffic calming and other freedom limiting measures in the name of the Precautionary Principle.
In light of this, responsible citizens are forced to ask the following question: If a politician does not support the most basic tenet of American government (namely, Natural Law), but instead chooses to impose restrictions on our freedom based on purely socialist doctrines, should that person be allowed to hold office and exercise authority in the American political system?
The nightmare we cannot awake from is not merely the construction of roadbed hazards that block the way to our homes and businesses. The nightmare we are experiencing is the corruption of the American system of government. The socialist doctrines that are the basis for implementing traffic calming and other transportation ordinances simply have no place in a free society.
That this situation can even occur is also part of the nightmare. Free citizens, knowingly or not, are electing officials who should be aware of their duty to protect individual rights, but who, for whatever purpose, abuse their power as elected officials by violating the right of citizens to pass freely through our towns and cities.
Another facet of "smart growth"
http://www.motorists.org, sign up.
You might be interested in this.
You betcha. These are good guys.
i thought it would parse out the comma.
We've got major thorofares, and residential streets, which are a bit too narrow for speed. But we have the usual pressures from cut through traffic, and it's often dangerous. So we're going to get some degree of traffic calming, after a lot of work and politcal maneuvering. Not the maze kind of thing, just amelioriating the situation somewhat. No speed bumps, but there are other ways.
It's not "smart growth". It's what you're forced to when things get nasty.
When the new suburbs don't have cul-de-sacs and every street is a (straight) through street, they can complain. Besides which, most of our tricky one-ways are to make cruising for prostitutes tougher for the folks from the burbs. (True fact.)
I will never again travel that highway. I don't know how the people here stand this. They must be totally demoralized and cowed by the politicians who can't come up with plans, only endless talk.
Leni
Make a point to inform people you know that politicians who harm your way of life by making legitimate travel impossible must not be re-elected.
One person who tells 10 people who tell 10 people, will get things done.
My old home town of Charlotte (I now live in its exurbs) is being choked by speed bumps, bumpouts, no-right-turn and no-left-turn signs, and the biggest nuisance, the 4-way stop sign in locations where there is no legitimate need for one. You know, a minor road intersecting a thoroughfare, with 99.5% of the traffic using the thoroughfare, and no traffic hazards existing, the 4-way stop existing purely to slow traffic, and thereby to discourage that bane of residential districts, "cut-through traffic."
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan at his famous 1980 New Hampshire Primary debate: "Hey, Mr. Traffic Engineer, I paid for that road!" For the traffic engineering department (probably at the behest of some City Council member who has a supporter in the neighborhood) to artificially restrict traffic through an influential neighborhood is intolerable.
And, of course, it's a rapidly spreading cancer. Once Bluebird Lane has speed bumps and needless 4-way stop signs installed, traffic will move to the next-best shortcut, Cardinal Lane, where the residents will demand equal treatment, resulting in increased traffic on Sparrow Lane, and so forth ad infinitum, with the "cut-through traffic" getting worse on each street until that street is similarly impeded.
Enough! Streets are made to be driven on. Constantly frustrating drivers cannot be a good idea in the long term. Far from "calming" traffic, it's likely to add to road rage.
The NMA is a great organization. If you like driving faster than 55, thank them.
I live in an old colonial town - i.e. ancient crossroads handling modern traffic. Residents here including me want traffic calming, to slow traffic to the speed-limit, not below it. Doesn't the writer think it's constitutional for a town to construct and govern its roads as it sees fit, or does she think the right to commute supersedes all?
Mrs VS
Most traffic calming slows traffic down to below the speed limit.
Living in an old colonial town, I would think you'd want firetrucks and emergency vehicles to get to an old clapboard house before it burns down. Emergency personel will deliberately reroute their trucks to avoid roads with traffic calming devices causing delays in their arrival which can mean the destruction of property and death.
Firemen have been injured falling off trucks that hit speed bumps and also had head and neck injuries from hitting their heads on the roof of their trucks.
Also, when an extended frame fire engine hits a speed bump, it can destroy the truck body, costing taxpayers additional money to repair or purchase new equipment.
The harm traffic calming causes economically and physically does not justify the "guilty until proven innocent" motive to stop all drivers from speeding, I think.
Do you live in a old wood house? I should think you would want the emergency vehicles to get their the most direct route possible, if there is a fire, wouldn't you?
Traffic calming does add to road rage. It also makes people speed on other roads so people can make up the delay they experienced on the "calmed" road.
That's a subtle way to play the "Nazi" card.
Traffic circles cemented
Fire trucks speeding to burning homes and ambulances carrying sick patients will see their response times suffer when controversial traffic circles are made permanent in Mount Royal and Elbow Park. Yesterday, aldermen decided to make the temporary measures there -- including speed bumps and traffic circles -- permanent, hoping their safety benefits will outweigh the loss of a few seconds to emergency vehicles.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/CalgarySun/News/2004/07/27/558452.html
* In Clovis, Calif., Fire Chief Jim Schneider said the department avoids all streets that have speed bumps, unless an emergency is on that street. Emergency response routes are diverted to other streets.
* In Eugene, Ore., the city agreed to avoid placing new speed bumps in major runs for the fire department. Fire trucks avoid streets with existing circles and speed bumps. "What people here finally came to realize is that the streets are our base of operation," said Matthew Shuler, district chief of Eugene's fire and emergency medical services.
In Portland, Ore., the transportation and fire departments conducted tests with all emergency vehicles on circles and speed humps and found it lost nine to 10 seconds per device. A videotape of the tests also showed how the inside of the truck was jarred, and the city agreed to a moratorium on speed bumps on emergency response routes. The city is working on a new street designation to set emergency routes apart, but the fire department doesn't oppose circles or humps on other streets.
* In Sacramento, Calif., the fire department determined trucks couldn't travel more than 15 mph over humps. Two firefighters were injured in separate incidents from the jolt caused by riding over the humps, according to Shuler, who studied other cities' plans for slowing traffic. Shuler said the jolt caused the seat-belted firefighters to strike their heads on the cab roof, and they suffered vertebral compression. One went on early retirement, and another was awarded permanent disability status.
http://www.io.com/~bumper/ada0004.htm
I think the article was warning about "socialist doctrines" but you are allowed your own thoughts about the subject.
In fact I think the article said that in a free country, people should not allow socialist doctrines to be implemented, because they are unconstitutional.
What do you think it said?
Yes and they'd be substantially correct in central California. In Fresno County the vast majority of drivers pilot their craft well above the posted speed limit whether in a residential area, a rural two lane road or on the local freeways. Speeding is a defacto defensive driving technique in Fresno County.
My experiences, while not as substantial as on my home turf, show this to be the general rule up and down the state. Those who don't are usually illegal aliens because they're afraid (unreasonably) of deportation.
Perhaps we should deport Fresno County residents to Mexico for 60 days if they get more than one speeding ticket in 18 months.
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