Single issue voter

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Hello,

Can someone tell me who caters least to families, children, and "no turn between 7-9 a.m." signs in the upcoming election?

Thanks!

Comments

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Take the train to work?

I think a lot of drivers tend to miss the point that most of what hey see as "annoying" in terms of traffic engineering in Cambridge and Somerville is really just the city's attempts to make things easier and safer for pedestrians at the expense of drivers so as to encourage more people to walk or take public transit instead of driving in the first place. IMHO people who say that pedestrians should suck it up so that drivers can drive through the city faster are barking up the wrong tree/living in the wrong city.

Additionally, there is a definite finite number of cars per hour that all cities can "process" on their streets. Walking and public transit have no such limitation (or at least in the case of PT, it is so much higher than our current usage that it is not worthwhile to consider), so engineering more efficient roads is not really in the best interest of the politicians of cities like Somerville and Cambridge because they are essentially fighting a losing battle. Say you re-engineer things so that the roads can handle 10 percent more cars per hour, so then the driving population goes up by 10 percent, but achieving the next 10 percent increase in roadway efficiency is 10 times as expensive as the last 10 percent increase, so that approach isn't really financially sustainable.

In other words, if you don't like driving in the city, why not explore alternate modes of transportation?

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Cue comment from privileged resident with local job who doesn't understand trains don't run everywhere.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I live in Teele Square and work in Woburn. I ride my bicycle to the train station in West Medford. Where do you live/work?

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

I live in Somerville and work in a remote area of Waltham. What does this have to do with the overbearing city government of Somerville?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Did you read the rest of the comment after the first line?

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

The wharrgarbl about how I should bike everywhere?

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'd like to change it because I can see how much more efficient it could be if people just sacrificed a little bit of their view or a little pedestrian space. On top of that, cars idling less would satisfy the greens and yuppies who were pissed about their Parisian sidewalks losing a square.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Historically, improving traffic efficiency in cities as densely populated as Cambridge and Somerville has never resulted in anything but an even larger number of cars waiting in the same amount of gridlock. The *only* meaningful remedy to the traffic problem is walking and public transit.

Two things I know to be true about Cambridge, however:
1. Everyone I know with a car hates driving through it because it takes a long time, traffic moves very slowly, and the lights take forever to change.
2. Pedestrians love it and tend to feel very safe walking around there. Much more so than Boston, Medford, Somerville, Everett, etc.

Making a city more "walkable" *always* increases property values. Thus I think you'll find very few local public officials *or* residents trying to favor the former over the latter. Especially in "green" and "yuppie" friendly areas like Cambridge and Somerville.

Also, no one really likes to live in areas that are more driving friendly than pedestrian friendly because they tend to be dominated by concrete and noise. Instead they want their own street to be walking-friendly and the rest of their city to be driving friendly. It's a classic case of "Not in My Back Yard," really.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with this comment. I still want rush hour-specific traffic signs removed.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Plenty of traffic problems can be and have been fixed around here. For example, at Cambridge Street and Columbia Street in Cambridge, the retiming of the light has basically eliminated the huge backups that used to occur there, *without* making things worse for pedestrians.

This makes things a lot better for people who ride the 69 bus. Cars can use alternate routes when there's traffic -- buses can't.

There are plenty of situations where it isn't a trade-off between making things better for cars and pedestrians. For example, the light at the center of Davis is inconvenient for everyone. For several of the crosswalks, there's often a red light for cars yet still no walk light for pedestrians, who have to sit around waiting for no reason until the entire intersection gets walk lights.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Davis is actually done pretty well, considering. But the light in the middle is the problem spot for sure. College ave traffic gets screwed.

[ron_newman]

I'd like to see the city turn the signal off entirely for a month, and study the resulting traffic pattern to see if it is an improvement over what the signal produces. (Not blinking yellow, not blinking red - just power it down for a month.)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

That would be neat.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

This whole "pedestrians must wait for every single direction to stop" problem seems to mainly be the result of traffic engineers trying to avoid having people in crosswalks being struck by drivers making left turns on a green light. Apparently this is one of the most common ways for a pedestrian to be injured in an intersection. I think the solution of having all lights be red when the walk signal is on is kind of excessive, but I'm not sure I have a better solution really.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

If traffic is so bad people are being hit by folks taking left turns, presumably the offender would be relatively easy to catch and prosecute.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I think usually traffic planners try to avoid letting it get to that point.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

All-way walk phases are not as popular any more with traffic engineers.

For some of the crosswalks in the main Davis intersection (namely the ones where the road is one way towards the intersection), the pedestrians get a Don't Walk even while no vehicles can legally be crossing the crosswalk. So even if the planners want to provide an all-way walk phase, those crosswalks should still have Walk lights during the other phases when no cars would be turning across.