I had to look up with these side shows are that the article mentions. I’ve never been to California. Anyway it’s a stupid as it sounds.
Sean Maher, Oakland’s Citywide Communications and Engagement Director told KTVU in part, "We all want safer streets, but increasing the risk to the public by installing hazards is not the solution.
Mfer didn’t know what traffic calming were.
Wait, no. This is not traffic calming, this is a bunch of yahoos putting obstacles in the road and congratulating themselves.
And wtf do they think will be improved by blocking the turn lane? A bigger question is why these MFers keep calling the turn lane a median?
And they seriously think it’s good that their obstacles flipped a car? wtf with that? They should be arrested for endangering or sued for the property damages.
I’m all for traffic calming measures and can see how it would benefit that street, but how about something that improves safety rather than risks danger
Ahh, i see you’re new to road design. I too are new to road design and has been ignorant for my whole life, so lemme walk you through what i’ve learn for the past few months:
This is not traffic calming, this is a bunch of yahoos putting obstacles in the road and congratulating themselves.
Nope, it is traffic calming. It use a bunch of tactic to make driver uncomfortable so they slow down naturally without resort to active enforcement, including but not exclusive to narrowing down the street, use road bump or raised crossing, and make the road
gaynot straight.And wtf do they think will be improved by blocking the turn lane?
It’s a tactic known as road diet. On that particular street from the footage, the turn lane(or median) combined with the two left and right lane are making the road too wide, this sort of encourage driver to drive fast because they feel safe to do so, making the residential road unsafe. The quickest and cheapest fix is to raise the median, eliminating the unnecessary turn lane which in turn narrowing down the street, so they plop down some dirt-filled tire in the middle lane. It also create a pedestrian island so whoever crossing the street will only need to look at one side at a time to cross, and also narrow down the street making it easier and quicker to cross. Of course the proper way to do it is to eliminate the median and narrow it down from the two side, either making the pedestrian path bigger or adding protected bike lane, but guerilla tactic often need to be quick and effective, and this is quick and effective.
A bigger question is why these MFers keep calling the turn lane a median?
It’s a road engineering term. In some place, median tend to be a reserved space that separate two traffic, usually left unpaved, or raised to properly separate traffic, decreasing traffic conflict thus decreasing accident, while also create a safe space for pedestrian. In North America it’s used as a shared turn lane.
And they seriously think it’s good that their obstacles flipped a car? wtf with that? They should be arrested for endangering or sued for the property damages.
I don’t think they feel good about it, but the driver also should feel bad about their own bad driving behaviour. If a car can hit an obstacle placed at the median and land on its side, then two thing is true: 1) they drive too fast; 2) they drive distracted. Drivers need to know they need to be in control of something weight at least 2ton pound, the consequence of it hitting someone is heavy. Replacing the tire with kids, and the story will be in different tone.
but how about something that improves safety rather than risks danger
I think safety should be applied to both driver, motorcyclist, cyclist, and pedestrian, but often time when people think about safety they almost always only think about the drivers, so they make the road wider and straight, while it slowly eats away pedestrian’s right to safety. It’s the sheer ignorance and lack of care toward anyone who isn’t in a car that rile up these people and make them take action.
It’s understandable that driver want to drive on a road without much resistance, the urge of unleashing that power is understandable, but at the same time, pedestrian doesn’t want to die too.
But y’all are falling into the same trap. Thinking anything that obstructs traffic is good for you and who cares about accidents? They happen to “those others”.
If you read my post you should see that I agree with the same goals yet disagree with the method. This ad hoc vigilantism is not traffic calming, it’s driver endangering.
A turn lane is not a road widening, encouraging speeding, this one is a poor implementation that looks like a wide open lane to someone who ignores driving rules. There are better implementations that don’t.
A turn lane is also not a median, point me to a definition that says it is. They have completely different goals and characteristics, but the problem here is cheapening out on road design such that the turn lane is continuous with the road, marked only by paint, and the paint is almost faded
We’ll see what happens when an immovable hazard is met by a stoppable hazard.
The consequences of dangerous driving should be borne by the people driving dangerously, and no one else.
Sorry but the consequences should be borne by those idiots putting shit in the road. I understand their frustration but this vigilantism is not the wsy
Coincidentally, “The Urbanist Agenda” just did an episode on this sort of thing. They were talking about community action groups in Canada and the US who have been conducting “guerrilla” actions in their home cities. From repainting roads to add bike lanes to installing flexiposts right into the asphalt to calm traffic. They talk about the effectiveness of different tactics and how to find similar groups in your own area.
The Urbanist Agenda: What to do When Your City Won’t Fix Things (with Bike Curious)
Episode webpage: https://art19.com/shows/the-urbanist-agenda
Hello, fellow AntennaPod user.
Also on Nebula if you have a subscription.
“Implement basic traffic calming measures or draw 25”
Good on them doing it themself.
They had a similar issue in Detroit with reckless drivers and racing. The neighborhoods literally poured their own speed bumps and it worked! The city didn’t go and remove them all, they instead went and replaced the home version with a real one. This is how Oakland should respond but as a former Ca resident the leaders of Oakland always seemed to fuck over their city
Speed bumps are the worst solution. You designed your road wrong, fix the damn design instead.
The problem is the roads are already there. Like sure we could redevelop the entire area over decades but we could also add some speed bumps like next week while we get around to the hard work.
The Netherlands did it over the course of a few decades, probably less than 20 years. You’d be surprised how fast things go since bicycle infrastructure is so dirt cheap in comparison to car infrastructure.
The next point is that what you’re saying is what you’ve been doing for decades, but nobody goes and actually fixes the issues at hand. I think it’s a cultural difference there too; in the Netherlands they constantly upgrade and change their infrastructure to make it all better whereas in the US, well, once a road is there it’ll better stay there for the next 50 years or so or maybe we’ll patch a little.
They continously monitor all roads as well. If an intersection has more accidents than normal, it gets scrapped, redesigned and rebuilt safer. Usually it gets upgraded to much safer roundabout. Speeds get lowered. In Canada or the US you’ll be lucky if a stop sign is placed, wow!
In my town in the Netherlands they lowered speeds throughout the city to from 50 to 30 kph, about 20mph. With most interactions now being roundabouts though, I can move faster there by car than I can here at home in Vancouver where speeds vary between 50 and 80 and mostly stopping at stop signs and traffic lights. Hell, anything under 5 miles, 8 kilometers, I can do faster by bike in the Netherlands than by car here in Canada. The Netherlands does what works.
If you keep placing speed bumps, you’ll never get anywhere.
Detroit doesn’t have the funds or capable police to stop these things. The bumps stopped the neighborhood racing and population in these areas praise them.
How come? I’ve seen impatient driver zip pass any traffic calming attempt while have to give in to speed bump. It’s annoying but it works
He probably drives a car.
I drive a car and think neighborhood speed calming methods are A-OK.
I drive, bicycle and walk, and think there’s a better way to safely do all three in this huge space, but not by throwing shit in the road
Shit? Sure.
Official things, like flexi sticks? Yes
I watched the news report and the anchor at the end asked “what do these people want the city to do?” As if she wasn’t even watching the damn report. Why not ask the question “when will the city and the police do their job?”
Yeah that frustrated me too, like it’s their job. There are civil engineers that are paid by the city to look into this exact thing. Install a roundabout. Put up an impassable median, put in protected bike lanes, whatever. The people PAID THROUGH OUR TAX DOLLARS, and elected by OUR VOTES, should listen and act when an entire community feels so threatened that they end up doing shit like this. Unreal.
As a European its just insane how wide these streets are.
Did they want to build a highway or a neigborhood street?
US street designers and their bosses seriously need to get this “wider=better” mentality out of their head. Its no wonder people are driving this fast when the streets are this wide, its because it feels slow.
Its also bad in other ways: wasted money, needlessly destroyed nature, increased urban heat island effect and increased flooding risk because its sealed.
Not Just Bikes just put up a video about how fire-fighters and their trucks fight for wider roads while having larger trucks than the rest of the world. Perfect timing there.
we have this issue on my street: we can’t get speed bumps because it’s an access point for the local fire department, and apparently they can only navigate the wide-low speed bumps (that do little to slow down traffic because people just drive 50mph over them).
it’s ridiculous. we’re on a one-car-wide side lane so traffic routinely snarls to a stop as people decide it’s their god-given turn to go now and honk and gesticulate instead of letting everyone get on with their lives. and when it’s not jammed with that bullshit, people are flying down the street (kids living in every house down both sides). Fucking nutbags.
This particular street is wider because it once had trolley tracks running down the middle, before the Key System was ripped out in 1958 by General Motors.
I watched this video yesterday and it’s the widest yet.
💖tactical urbanism💖
My city has tried to co-opt that term to mean (relatively) quick and cheap projects led (and paid for) by the community, but with city approval. On one hand, it’s better than nothing, but on the other hand, the permitting still takes like a year and so it feels more like a half-assed government project than a legitimized community project.
I can’t decide whether to be pissed off about them calling it “tactical urbanism” or to just let them have the term and call actual unsanctioned improvements “guerilla urbanism” or something instead.
Something similar happened in my city on the east coast.
Small and quiet street had people flying through it as a shortcut. Residents built a wall on one end turning it into a dead end street.
The city tore down the barrier and promptly put up a sidewalk to make it permanent.
