The Drunk Driver at Midnight

I recently read about a major road improvement to Freeport Blvd., a north-south surface street in SACTOWN that's been used by hundreds of millions over the years to drive between the job centers downtown and the south-land suburbs. Some of the key characteristics of this improvement project were traffic-calming measures.

Traffic calming. What a joke. These sorts of concepts will invariably keep me blogging for decades to come.

I'm a fan of Jules Verne, and he loved to exhaustively list things. I do too, but perhaps not so exhaustively. I'm absolutely confident that the reader could identify hundreds of environments that will never need traffic calming, too...but my job here in the modern Nautilus is to do that for you: Old Sacramento, Santillana Del Mar, Savannah's historic district, Amsterdam, Tribeca, Boston's Beacon Hill, Chicago's Wrigleyville, Old Georgetown....

These neighborhoods are among the highest valued in the world. Why? Not just because of location. They were built in an era that respected human scales, and people are naturally drawn to enclosed, well-proportioned, properly scaled living arrangements. While not ubiquitous, the T-intersection is a key feature that's no longer an option in the modern city planning repertoire.

And why not?

It doesn't support the efficient movement of motor vehicles. Have you ever noticed that every subdivision today exists on curvilinear streets? They never even existed 25 years ago, yet modern urban planners can't design without them because they only think about cars -- not bicyclists, joggers, dog-walkers, or the people in the houses. Streets today are designed with the ‘drunk driver at midnight’ in mind – no trees (fixed obstacles to drunk drivers), wide lanes (to allow drunk drivers to weave safely) and never, never! any T-intersections (the drunk driver would plow into the building at the end). I offer my own local observation: where I live, the corner of Frye Creek and Moonlight Way.

Frye Creek is a two lane, 35 mph curvilinear street, 46 feet wide, with nary a white lane marker to be found. Cars routinely move 55+, with ease. Curvilinear to close the vista at the end (to offer some degree of an enclosed space) but not so curved as to impede a 60 mile an hour vehicle. Moonlight Way is also two lane and curvilinear, but ‘only’ 32 feet wide, also with no white line delineation. I live on a 27-foot radius corner. Not only do the theoretical pedestrians have to now cross the larger distance between corner to corner, they also have to negotiate it alongside the hurtling 40 mile-an-hour suburban housewife on a cell-phone turning the wide, car-accommodating corner.

I cannot overstate how fucked up I think this living arrangement is. I recently lost my dog to a speeder. I lost a basketball hoop and trashcan to an idiot turning the corner too fast. I lost the use of my truck when another idiot plowed into it in my driveway and garage while turning the corner too fast. It’s only a matter of time until something more serious happens.

So… I could fight like hell against the city to have them stripe lane markers or install speed bumps. Ha! Traffic Calming! Now required because of their fucked up urban planning! It would take years, would require traffic analysis and metering, and I would likely not ‘qualify’ for such measures – the street isn’t 750’ feet in length, it’s 735’…it doesn’t meet the ‘volume’ threshold; fast cars, yes, but not enough of them…insufficient evidence of accidents, deaths, or dismemberments. And do you know who routinely objects to speed bumps? My own fire department! Overt or otherwise, they are the real culprits as to why I have such wide streets to begin with, why I don’t have any goddamn ‘traffic calming’ devices, and to that end, why there aren’t any T-intersections. Can’t negotiate an oversized fire truck on narrow ninety-degree street corners or alleyways, can they.

I’d bet the Elk Grove fire department spends a larger percentage of their time responding to traffic accidents than to fires…accidents that they’ve enabled by their own fucking idiotic requirements. I don’t want to discount the culpability of irresponsible drivers. But to enable a 17-year old to drive 65 down a suburban street because of poor design? Adults drive to their limits of comfort…teenagers drive to their limits of danger. These are things that we don’t have to live with! But we do! All to enable the motor vehicle!

My contempt is obvious. For the reasons cited above, I am willing to sacrifice my and your lifestyle and livelihood for the desperate hope that our 50-year suburban experiment soon comes to a quick, violent end.