You’ve seen the bumper stickers: “Slow down in town”. They’re an often futile attempt to encourage speeding motorists to be more respectful of the neighborhoods they are zooming through, especially of the pedestrians. I wouldn’t exactly call it road rage, but why is it that when we’re behind the wheel, our goal is to get on down the road as fast as traffic will allow, the speed limit be damned?
Of course in our own neighborhoods our interests are reversed. We curse “those idiots” who speed down our local streets ignoring the signs (“Drive Like Your Kids Lived Here”).
Increasingly, local neighborhoods are serving as short-cuts around clogged arterial streets, spreading out the traffic into our sleepy, bucolic ‘burbs. But there is a way to enforce the speed limit without radar traps. It’s what traffic engineers call “traffic calming”.
You might not know that the first US city to develop a master plan for neighborhood traffic calming was Hartford. And the second city will be Stamford. Work is also underway in New Canaan and New Haven. More than just “speed bumps”, engineers have a slew of street re-designs in their repertoire that can force us to reduce our speed. Among them …
Speed Tables: Think of these as extended speed bumps with a six-foot-long ramp up, a ten-foot-long flat table and a six-foot-long ramp down.
Roundabouts: Small traffic circles with landscaping in the center make us slow down as we go around them, eventually taking a right turn to continue our journey.
Chicanes: These are the stubby, picket-fence-like, mini-roadblocks seen on some private streets, alternating their placement on the right and left sides of the road, forcing drivers to make a zigzag maneuver down the street. The same effect can be achieved by placing parking spaces alternately on the right and left sides.
Bulb-Outs or Neck-Downs: These are extensions of the sidewalk into car parking areas at corner crossings. Again, you gotta slow down.
Sidewalks: It’s amazing how many of our communities lack these pedestrian amenities, forcing hoofers to compete for space on the asphalt with cars. Sidewalks get pedestrians out of the traffic and encourage us to walk and leave the car at home.
Crosswalks: What a concept! A place where pedestrians have the right-of-way over cars, sometimes even mid-block and without the need for stop signs or red lights.
Roadblocks and Mazes: These were inspired by anti-crime efforts in drug dealing neighborhoods (“crime calming”), making it hard for drive-through drug buyers to find their way in and out of a neighborhood. Local residents know how to maneuver the maze, but casual short-cutters won’t try it again.
Of course, all of these traffic calming techniques assume that the major traffic arterials, where the cars belong, can be kept flowing with their own traffic tricks. Otherwise, we’re just spreading the gridlock into the neighborhoods.
Editor’s Note: Jim Cameron has been a Darien resident for 23 years. He is the founder of the Commuter Action Group and also serves on the Darien RTM. The opinions expressed in this column are only his own. You can reach him at [email protected]