For the past couple of weeks, just across Spring Street from my house, a police car has been a regular daily fixture. The policeman parks there, clocks the traffic going past, and then cherry-picks the speeders. He’ll pull one over, issue a ticket, circle around the block, and repeat the process.
Meanwhile, the traffic continues to whiz past. He nabs one of them, and in the meantime, 20 others commit precisely the same offense. Yesterday, seconds after the police car shot into traffic to pull over a passenger car, a Sears/Enterprise truck barreled past, easily traveling in excess of 50 miles per hour.
One way of looking at all this is that the city is attempting as best it can to enforce traffic flow on a major thoroughfare.
But isn’t this really an example of the familiar question, to wit: Are we working harder, or working smarter? A few days ago, I saw this comment on Twitter.
If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan cities for people and places, you get people and places.
Wouldn’t it be a better idea to calm traffic by redesigning the street, rather than creating speed traps?
Isn't regaining control of the streets in this fashion as important -- nay, more important -- than planting flowers?
It's always interesting to note how those who do not actually reside in the city enjoy a certain misplaced primacy. They want us to maintain the city for their drive-through ease, not our live-in quality, and we respond mostly by obeying their command, while reserving the right to periodically target them for random traffic enforcement.
Isn't this ultimately futile?
2 comments:
Yes, it is futile. If the city were the least bit serious about slowing traffic through neighborhoods, it could be accomplished for little money. A more serious revamp is needed but just slowing cars with something like speed humps is easy and cheap. The humps themselves are movable, reusable, and even made from recycled materials.
It's purely a lack of political will. Nothing more, nothing less.
Do like the Dutch have done...go to junk yards, buy old furniture and then start leaving out in the middle of the street so cars have to slow down. At some point, the city gets tired of clearing the street and starts listening to the people actually affected by the high speed traffic instead of listening to those who just want a thoroughfare.
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