The very term, “traffic calming measure” as applied to traffic circles makes our little hamster wheel break into pieces.
Most of the time, we’re on the same side of the road as Herald “Streetwise” columnist Larry Lebowitz. It is good that someone at the Miami Herald is paying attention to traffic. But yesterday’s “Traffic circles on the rise” was street-ready as a Ford Pinto.
We have had a beef with traffic circles since they started becoming as ubiquitous as “tattoos on twentysomethings.” That much we agree on.
But the column veers off the road shoulder when we read that “local governments are turning to circles to combat speeding and cut down on high volumes of cut-through traffic in residential areas.”
That is not what local governments are “turning to”.
What local government is turning to are developer impact fees, paid as a condition of building permits for malls and high rises to address traffic impacts. It is called "mitigation". And it is worthless.
Many if not all of the traffic circles popping up are paid for as traffic “mitigation” by developers. They mitigate nothing.
Traffic circles are “calming” to traffic as pepper spray is calming to an elephant.
Developers and compliant city and county commissioners have shifted the cost of development to taxpayers and residents in a way that is unsustainable in Miami.
Infrastructure like roadways and mass transit are so inadequate in Miami that businesses increasingly view our region as an inhospitable place to work.
So you would think that the Chamber of Commerce and Miami Herald would be on our side in calling for a drastic reduction in building permits until basic infrastructure problems are worked out, funded, and constructed.
We’re sitting on $7 billion of unfunded infrastructure deficits! So here’s our suggestion: that the next “Sand in our Shoes” award given by the Chamber to a land use lobbyist, lawyer, or developer should be a traffic circle.
Come to think of it: the mayor, the city and county commissioners who blessed every single construction crane towering over the City of Miami, indifferent to whether people living here now, or living here in the future, will even be able to get out of their condominium garages, should all have traffic circles named after them.
Long after they are gone and forgotten, future generations of car owners will wonder—wtf is this traffic circle doing here?
That is why we’re leaning on the horn with respect to Lebowitz’s piece, because you have to read all the way to the bottom of the article before you get to the meat of the matter, “It’s always easier for politicians to satisfy short-term, micro-local problems, a block at a time, with quick, relatively inexpensive fixes. But who’s looking out for the impact on the transportation network as a whole?”
That IS the question about the inane purpose of traffic “calming” measures. We know that Larry Lebowitz understands—so why isn’t the focus of his column the inadequacy of traffic mitigation fees, paid by developers?
We’re waiting for an answer…
4 comments:
great article... wtf is this traffic circle doing here should be the title of the Lebowitz article.
The problem is that traffic circles really DO slow down traffic. I know this because I'm from New Jersey, and when I was a kid, New Jersey had more traffic circles than any state in the nation.
But those circles were used on major highways in place of traffic signals. The idea is that traffic would never have to stop, it would simply flow around the circle.
And that worked great when cars had problems detting up to 40 MPH. But as cars and highway speeds rose, the traffic circles soon became causes of congestion. The state has spent millions removing them over the last 25 years.
IF you're arguing that you don't like them, fine. If you're arguing you don't want tax dollars spent, great. But any argument that they don't slow down traffic is simply a lie.
The point of traffic circles is that they are allowed by local government as "mitigation" by developers for traffic impacts: a false equation.
Traffic circles would have no place in the "mitigation" of impacts if government was serious about requirements of concurrency.
But doing so, would be to acknowledge that the arithmetic of growth is based on cheating taxpayers, piling on costs by using features (like traffic circles) to mask the fact that real costs of growth are never accounted for properly.
I did mny share to reduce auto traffic in Miamniby moving out of state. I did return in January for three weeks and admit I have never seen traffic as bad. I think part of the solution in the urban core is not to require parking spaces in the condo towers. That would cause the developers to design and sell to
people willing to take public transportaion.
Steve Hagen, Green Landscaped Park Advocate
Take 30 seconds to sign a comprehensive petition named More Parks For Miami NOW at http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/more-parks-for-miami
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