The Secret Behind The Popularity Of Traffic Calming
January 3rd, 2008 Posted in Traffic Calming
The term “traffic calming” is simply a device to put a favorable “spin” on tactics used to obstruct, divert and slow traffic. Proponents of these tactics are usually persons who live along urban or suburban streets and object to motor vehicle traffic passing by their homes.
Although residents usually couch their complaints in terms like “speeders” and “reckless drivers,” the true irritant for “traffic calming” advocates is heavy traffic.
Their desired objective is to divert traffic to other streets outside their neighborhood.
The devices employed to accomplish this diversion of traffic include unnecessary stop signs, speed humps and bumps, lane narrowing obstructions, and absurdly low speed limits.
Increased traffic on residential streets is often caused by misguided and ill-informed management of the main arterials and collector streets. These streets are designed to carry most of the traffic, keeping it off of residential streets. What proponents of “traffic calming” always fail to realize is that the reason they are seeing more traffic on their residential streets is because the same tactics have already been applied to main arterials and collector streets.
These include improper installation of stop signs, mistimed traffic signals, and under-posted speed limits that have no relation to actual vehicle speeds. Throw in construction and congestion, and it is no surprise that residential streets are experiencing increased commuter traffic.
The solution to this problem is not to further obstruct traffic flow by pushing the problem into someone else’s neighborhood.
The real solution is to upgrade and improve the traffic handling capabilities of main thoroughfares. This means implementing physical improvements, as well as raising speed limits and synchronizing traffic controls to accommodate actual vehicle speeds.
If main streets provide convenient access between home, work and shopping destinations, motorists will use them, versus alternate routes through residential neighborhoods.
Traffic obstruction devices:
1) Can increase response time for emergency vehicles.
When seconds matter, having to slow to pass over speed bumps and humps or navigate narrow roadways can mean the difference between life and death, or the loss of one’s home. The fact that some of these devices can seriously damage emergency vehicles and other vehicles along the roadway is also a concern.
2) Can increase congestion on other streets and create problems in other neighborhoods.
If traffic obstruction devices divert traffic to other streets, they may compound congestion problems that already exist in those areas. If not successful in diverting traffic to other streets, traffic obstruction devices will compound congestion problems on the streets on which they are installed.
3) Will increase vehicle wear and tear, air pollution, and noise.
Braking and accelerating in response to speed bumps, speed humps, stop signs, and traffic signals increases fuel consumption and emissions. This can contradict other efforts to reduce emissions and contribute to a community becoming or remaining a “non-attainment” air quality zone, thereby being subjected to federal mandates and restrictions.
4) Can increase street maintenance costs.
Speed bumps and humps impede plowing and street cleaning equipment. Removable devices may soon be available, although they will require additional labor to install and remove them. Municipalities must maintain and repair stop signs and traffic signals, at taxpayer expense, of course.
5) May cause physical discomfort, even pain, for disabled persons or persons with physical ailments.
Being jolted or jostled by speed bumps and humps can be painful for persons with injuries or painful illnesses.
6) Create neighborhood friction.
Not all persons (not even most persons) on a given street will appreciate having to run an obstacle course every time they drive to or from home. Some traffic obstruction opponents blow their horns or yell verbal insults when having to slow or stop for speed bumps or humps. Frequently, the response to unnecessary stop signs is to ignore them, which is extremely dangerous for anyone who’s not familiar with driving in that area.
For an example of how one person convinced his neighboorhood to abandon their traffic calming plan, check out this article: How A Simple Flyer Turned The Tides.
Image Credit: Richard Drdul
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5 Responses to “The Secret Behind The Popularity Of Traffic Calming”
By Chris on Jan 5, 2008
#6 offers the best argument against traffic calming devices: they have slowly eroded the public’s confidence, and more importantly, their respect for stop signs and speed limits.
By moe on Jan 7, 2008
Rather than posting these pointless posts, why not detail NMA’s successes helping neighborhoods and others deal with the real problems — viz., poor infrastructure and traffic flow on arterial roads that make speeding on our quiet streets so appealing (and dangerous)? Who really wants speedbumps or other devices? Or is all smoke and mirrors, to obscure NMA’s impotence to affect the upstream causes? Which brings us back to the things people try to do locally. And let’s be honest: Most speedbumps don’t require fire trucks or others to stop for 15 seconds. And what erodes confidence faster than failure to enforce consistently existing laws for the safe responsible operation of cars? How long does it take crowds in your area to speed back up after passing a patrol car giving out tix? Or go for a drive in your area and count the number of failures to stop at red lights before turning left? Cripes. Aim your resources at the real problems. Please.
By Bob White on Jan 8, 2008
I’m confused, you rightly oppose Red-light cameras, & day-time headlights, but poo-hoo “Traffic Calming”, & don’t even mention Roundabouts.
You don’t happen to believe the WW2 Holocost is a myth, do you? Or are the the US President of the John Wayne Fan Club?
Regards,
By Rod Barnes on Jan 8, 2008
This last summer, they repaved and replaced the “calming” humps on one of our nearby streets. They did this because of the “divots” created at the far side of each hump as each vehicle comes over the hump and the weight is shifted forward to the front wheels.
So guess what is already showing up again less than six months later? Yep, the divots are back.
I completely agree with this article that they aren’t about safety, but you would think that, if they are going to do it, they would factor in the additional road impact of the vehicle coming over the hump. Clearly, they didn’t and so it means replacing that section of road on a more frequent basis as the divots become pronounced over time.
Ridiculous.
By Kathleen Calongne on Jan 10, 2008
The NMA does not oppose “traffic calming.” This is a strawman argument. Enforcement is traffic calming. The NMA opposes devices that create more risk than they prevent — such as speed humps — and, that are meant to artificially lower speeds below posted speed limits — as the most commonly installed Watts profile speed hump (12 ft. long 3-4 1/2 ” high design profile of 15 - 20 mph) does.
There is very good reason why unending controversy surrounds speed humps, in particular. They are meant to create discomfort for everyone, and harm to some. The US Access Board in Washington, DC has acknowledged that the devices cause lasting pain and injury to people with some disabilities. The same can occur to able bodied people for simply making the mistake of inadvertently not braking in time, or even speeding. Their effects are inequitable, depending on the type of vehicle one drives. There is not a single study that shows fire trucks and ambulances are not delayed by the devices.
There are many speed “calming” techniques, even beyond enforcement, that aren’t aimed at diverting traffic to someone else’s street and punishing people for driving vehicles. And, that’s what raised devices are for.
In regard to “roundabouts.” What has resulted from allowing true roundabouts, which work well in other countries, on US streets is the expansion of the definition to include a round island in any square intersection, regardless of intersection size, and where there is insufficient separation of vehicles or time to anticipate who got there first or the movement of the vehicle in the intersection (yes, intersection — a round obstruction in the middile of an intersection does not change the geometry of the intersection). There was a death at a traffic “circle” in Boulder on a street where there had never been a death before. But, the circle’s still there.
Gerald Wilde, retired professor at Queen’s University, wrote an article on “risk homeostasis.” In it, he aptly describes the change in traffic engineering philosophy that has occurred here and abroad. The goal of engineering street design was always to lessen the severity of the consequences of acccidental or risky driver behavior, Now, it’s to increase the severity of the consequences. i.e. speed humps and traffic circles