Low Budget Traffic Calming

I usually don't have a lot of positive things to say about North KC (due to hostility to opening up levees for trail usage) which maybe if I ever am able to blog using two hands again I'll write about.

However, I do owe kudos to Northtown for their recent low budget traffic calmind on NE 32nd Street.  These simple low budget planters break up the wide collector street and delineate the on street parking.

I bet they dodn't do a $100,000 study with a bunch of pretty renderings and series of public meetings.  I bet they probably sketched up something and got some bids.  It's a good start.

Compare that to an APWA standard residential collector which is so wide to allow on street parking on both sides of the street and still allow two cars to pass.

 Here's a feeble attempt at some "traffic calming."

In the effort to make streets "safer" by fire marshalls and traffic engineers in the 60's I think we made them worse by making them easier to speed on yet not kill yourself if an accident occurred.  If I ruled the world, streets that promote speeding like this would become history and more streets like this (with a bike lane added) would be built. 

Speed is a function of design.  Someone has spouted the statement "narrow lanes reduce speeding" which I feel is not true.  The lane widths on Southwest Trafficway are around 9.5-10' and when was the last time you drove that doing less than 40mph? 

Multi-lane streets promote speeding period.  If you as society feel that we need to have safe streets, you need to voice your opinion and let folks know that engineers and planners shouldn't design for perceived future traffic needs which may never happen (see this). 

The folks in the Line Creek Valley did this when improvements to Waukomis/Green Hills were proposed and I must say I am very happy they did because the improvements have slowed cars down and almost eliminated all the horrible accidents that used to happen.  A four lane improvement would have never been funded due to cost and we'd still have a death road.  Instead we have a newer two lane road with a sidewalk and landscaping. 

We can't afford massive road widening projects anymore.  We need to fine tune our existing transportation system and instead make our focus on designing for safety and sidewalks. 

If I ever get a second hand to type I'd love to elaborate on that more.