Well, yes, it seems Somerville does want to make driving as slow and frustrating as possible so that less people drive. I have spoken to at least one business owner who moved out for this reason.
In all fairness traffic studies are kind of like military intelligence (i.e. an oxymoron or often a failure). Newton redid traffic in Newton Center a while back (last summer?) to make one lane outbound on Beacon at Langley right turn only when the traffic making the left turn usually backs up the left lane and also changed the traffic turning right from Center onto Beacon inbound in some way which I've managed to block out of my mind. The residents all pretty much said - those changes aren't going to work and are going to be a complete hairball and make traffic worse. After about a month of worse traffic, Newton had to redo both of those changes at some non-minor expense.
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Date: 2015-06-16 08:38 pm (UTC)In all fairness traffic studies are kind of like military intelligence (i.e. an oxymoron or often a failure). Newton redid traffic in Newton Center a while back (last summer?) to make one lane outbound on Beacon at Langley right turn only when the traffic making the left turn usually backs up the left lane and also changed the traffic turning right from Center onto Beacon inbound in some way which I've managed to block out of my mind. The residents all pretty much said - those changes aren't going to work and are going to be a complete hairball and make traffic worse. After about a month of worse traffic, Newton had to redo both of those changes at some non-minor expense.