Prying the Overton Window Further Open

An intersection in Calistoga
that lacks pedestrian accommodation

A few weeks back, I noted a Petaluma post on Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social media site, arguing for increased pedestrian awareness by drivers.  It was cleverly written and I agreed with the thrust.  However, I disagreed with the implicit suggestion that awareness/education was the right approach for achieving a goal, pedestrian safety, for which 100 percent compliance should be the target.

So I wrote a post arguing that education isn’t a strong enough tool when universal compliance is needed.  Instead, I suggested alternative thinking about street design, specifically proffering street configurations that would result in lower travel speeds.

It was topic that many people found worthy of further discussion.  Tweets and retweets to over 20,000 followers followed the publishing of the post on my own and the Vibrant Bay Area websites.  Also, a link was included in a national blog on street design.  

But it seems likely that few of the readers I attracted were local.

I posted a link on Nextdoor comment thread that triggered the post.  Before the thread died, there were 42 comments total.  Of those, how many do you think agreed with my suggestion for alternative thinking about street design?  Zero.  How many even acknowledged my contribution to the discussion?  Still zero.  Every other comment remained, in one way or another, on the theme of better educating drivers and/or pedestrians.

I don’t report this to ridicule the other commenters or to complain about the lack of attention.  I’m accustomed to the response.  Silence, followed by a wandering away of the audience, has been the typical reaction to similar calls I’ve made elsewhere for street design changes that would reduce travel speeds and promote pedestrian safety.  The lesson I’ve garnered is that I must be persistent, with the hope that someday folks will begin paying attention.

I’ve now learned that there is a developed philosophy on the subject of acceptable and unacceptable topics for public discourse.  The Overton Window was named after the late Joseph Overton, an official with a public policy think tank.  Initially formulated to describe the rhetorical limits for public officials, the Overton Window has been described as the “range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.” 

The Overton Window models argues that, radiating outward from current policy, are ideas that progress through decreasing levels of public acceptance from popular to sensible to acceptable to radical to unthinkable.

Applying the Overton Window to the current presidential campaign, I think we’ve found that xenophobic police states, as long as described in temperate language, are somewhere between acceptable and radical, as are universal healthcare and reduced costs for secondary education.   But when the last two are described as “socialist” they become unthinkable, an interesting case of a label changing perceptions.

Moving to the world of urbanism, I’d suggest that mixed-use development is in the acceptable range.  Having a mixed-use district, along with transit and other accoutrements, to create walkable urban development is in the radical range.  But alternative street designs to promote pedestrian safety are unthinkable.  I find it an odd place to draw that line, but I’m not a member of the general public, at least on this topic.

So, what can be done to bring some of these ideas inside the Overton Window?  Increasing discourse.  I don’t see an alternative path to making topics become more acceptable than to continually talk about them as being reasonable and appropriate.  By writing this blog, I’m doing what I can, while acknowledging that there is always more that I could be doing, but what is truly needed is for readers to further the spread of urbanist ideas.

Obviously, I hope that readers agree with much of what I write.  But even if they disagree, or have alternative perspectives that differ in the details, they need to be participating in their communities and talking about ideas like walkable neighborhoods and improved pedestrian safety through different road design standards.

And lest someone think that the task is impossible, I’ll point out that Edinburgh recently set the speed limits on 80 percent of its streets at 20 mph, becoming the most recent city in Great Britain to take a similar step.  Ponder that for a moment.  A capital city, a functioning, vibrant city, set the most of its speed limits below the minimum speed limit allowed on California streets.

The problem isn’t that urbanists don’t have good ideas.  It’s that we haven’t been successful at getting those ideas into general circulation on this side of the pond.

Let’s work together to shove the Overton Window further open.

The earlier post on changed street designs also triggered comments on vertical traffic calming.  I have a further insight on the subject to offer in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Looking More Closely for the Coded Messages Being Sent to Drivers

I’ve often written about the nonintuitive but ultimately logical method by which speed limits are set in California.  For those new to the subject, speed limits are established by the speeds at which cars travel when drivers are unaware of a speed limit.  So if most drivers demonstrate by their actions that a road should be driven at 30 mph, the speed limit under California law would be 30 mph, with only a few exceptions.

This standard for setting speed limits has interesting implications for urbanists and for all who care about traffic safety.  Specifically, drivers will travel at the maximum speed at which they feel comfortable.  Therefore, making drivers less comfortable would have the effect of reducing both travel speeds and speed limits.

After decades of seeking to improve the driving experience and road safety by widening streets, removing street trees, and requiring off-street parking, we now understand that the primary result was greater speeds that often reduce safety.   Instead, we should have been increasing driver discomfort by narrowing streets, planting street trees, and encouraging on-street parking.

I have a neighbor who regularly complains about two aspects of the cars on our street.  First, she grumbles that too many cars speed.  Second, she protests when people she doesn’t know park at the curb in front of her home.  Perhaps I’ll find an opportunity over the holiday season to explain to her that more parked cars, especially badly parked ones that encroach into the travel lane, would slow traffic, so her two complaints are inconsistent.  Watching her splutter can be a Christmas gift to myself.

(Another aspect of our street, which I’ll broach if I really want to mess with the neighbor, is that the street, like many older streets in Petaluma, has received supplemental lifts of asphalt over the years without a full depth repaving.  The result is road section that is significantly humped in the middle.  Most of the neighbors complain that the City owes us a full depth repaving.  But the humped section reduces driver comfort and thereby reduces traffic speeds, a point that I’d enjoy making.)

I’ve written much of this before, but a recent comment by a young North Bay planner cast a more personal light on speed limits.  In describing the Petaluma home in which he’d grown up, he noted that safety on his childhood street was quite good.  Because of the narrow width and extensive street parking, the few drivers who traversed the street did so with caution.

I knew the exact street segment to which he was referring, although I don’t travel it often because I don’t find it a friendly street to drive, proving his point.

His comment induced me to take a short tour of Petaluma, camera in hand, to document a range of street sections.  The top photo is from the street on which the planner spent his youth.  The second is also from the Oakhill Brewster neighborhood, around the corner from the first street.  Although the second street is wider, both feel confined by parked cars and both have the centerline humps that also slow speeds.

It was interesting to note that there are few if any speed limit signs within Oakhill Brewster.  The street geometry keeps drivers below 25 mph, which is the generally lowest speed limit allowed by California, so there was no need for the signs.

In contrast, I then visited the site of an eastside apartment project now under planning review.  At the hearings on the project, the neighbors complained strenuously about traffic speeds.  I’ve written several times about the issue, most recently here.  The upper photo is in front of the proposed apartment site; the lower is around the corner on a crossing street.

The different between the two sets of photos is striking.  The absence of street parking and/or greater street width in the latter set increases driver comfort and speed.  The absence of a significant centerline hump does the same.  It’s not surprising that the neighbors near the latter two photos have complained about travel speeds.

And I remain convinced that the reduced lane widths I’ve been pushing for the neighborhood could be an essential step toward reducing driver comfort and thereby reducing speeds.

Next time you’re bothered by speeding in a neighborhood, take a look at the street section, consider it relative to these photos, and conceive ways to make drivers less comfortable.  Then push your solution at city hall.  The city folks will be so shocked to have someone with answers rather than complaints that they might be willing to give a good listen.

The past few days have been rainy, a pleasant change for drought-stricken California.  Some will argue that, although it’s still too early to be sure, the end of the drought may be close.  I disagree, for reasons I’ll explain in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Easing the Pressure on the Gas Pedal

In my last post, I began to write about an on-line neighborhood chat on the subject of teenager drivers traveling with excess haste on residential streets.  However, I was distracted by the participants in the chat, many of whom belong to my generation, calling for reduced freedoms for high school students.  The advocacy was sufficiently unexpected that it took me down a path of memories of student battles fought and student freedoms won when I was young.

Today, I’ll stay on topic.

The on-line chat, which happened during the run-up to a meeting between the administration of the nearby high school and concerned neighbors, was an attempt to list the topics that the neighbors wanted on the agenda.  The most significant concern, by far, was speeding and other aggressive driving behavior in the surrounding neighborhood.

Being a resident of the neighborhood, I can confirm that the issue is legitimate.  I don’t find the driving to be so obnoxious that it affects my everyday life, but there are a handful of drivers who consistently drive with unreasonable aggressiveness.  A neighbor recently told me of being passed on her street while she was driving near the speed limit, a driving decision that is clearly inappropriate in a residential neighborhood, especially a walkable residential neighborhood.

Having identified driving as the principal worry, solutions were offered by the parties.  Someone suggested a need for speed bumps.  Someone else correctly noted that most fire departments don’t allow speed bumps because they slow emergency vehicle response times.

The conversation then turned to increased policing, either through the use of local police or through the neighbors reporting license plate numbers to the school.

Before wandering off into questions of closed campuses and dress codes, someone stated that, student driving concerns aside, it nonetheless remained true that the streets had been built for cars.

Although I didn’t have the time to participate in the conversation, there many comments I wanted to interject.  This is my chance.

Vertical Traffic Calming: Speed bumps belong to a group of traffic management tools generally known as vertical traffic calming.  Related tools are speed humps, which are widened speed bumps that can be driven safely at speeds of 20 mph or more depending on the design, and speed tables, which are expanded areas of raised pavement, often at drop-off points for stores, and are intended to make drivers feel as if they are in the pedestrians’ realm, rather than the pedestrians being in their realm.

It’s true that fire departments generally oppose vertical traffic calming on the grounds that it slows emergency vehicles.  Personally, I find the opposition is a fine example of giving infinite weight to one decision element, emergency response time, over another decision element, slowing everyday traffic.

Of course, bringing more reason to fire department policies will be a long and difficult battle.  In the meantime, we can observe the irony of fire departments arguing for public safety by arguing against measures that would slow traffic.  I love a good bit of irony.

Horizontal Traffic Calming: Although still not a favorite of fire departments, horizontal traffic calming is more likely to gain approval and can often be more successful at reducing speeds.  It was a disappointing, but not unexpected, that the chat participants didn’t even mention horizontal traffic calming.  Although effective, horizontal traffic calming measures are not among the tools of which most people think.

Typical horizontal traffic calming measurements are reduced lane widths through paint or relocated curb lines, bulb-outs at intersections, reduced curb radii at intersections, and even parking that alternates between sides of the street, resulting in a chicane for drivers to traverse.

The SMART Codes that many cities, including Petaluma, now use to regulate their downtowns include a number of horizontal traffic calming measures.  One can visit the Theatre District of Petaluma to observe lesser lane widths and bulb-outs.  The recent Petaluma Boulevard road diet also includes horizontal calming.

Horizontal calming is important because it induces drivers to reduce speeds by making them feel uncomfortable at higher speeds.  As California speed limits are set by the actual measured speeds of drivers, horizontal calming can also lead to reduced speed limits.

And reducing average speed is important because it makes the street more safe while also limiting how fast much the occasional reckless driver may travel.  Horizontal calming, and the resulting reduced speed limits, are key elements of the European Twenty is Plenty movement, which argues that 20 mph is an appropriate speed for most neighborhoods, and the parallel Vision Zero movement, which targets zero pedestrian death through numerous measures including lower vehicle speeds.  Vision Zero has been implemented in New York City with a widespread speed limit of 25 mph.

The Twenty is Plenty and Vision Zero movements grew out of the fact that we’ve consistently built streets that can be comfortably driven at speeds in excess of the speeds for which we had hoped.  Perhaps it’s my sense of humor, but I find it funny that one of the biggest problems encountered during a recent cross-country driverless car experiment was the frustration of other drivers that the driverless car wouldn’t exceed the posted speed limit.

Also, slower speeds have multiple benefits, from reduced stopping distances to increased awareness of other street users, as described in this article from Minneapolis about the benefits of reducing travel speed by just ten mph.

If we want safer streets, we need slower travel speeds.  And slower travel speeds don’t need speed bumps when bulb-outs and striping will work just fine.

Policing: Policing can be a valid strategy to reduce traffic speeds, but it’s expensive and its effectiveness often has a limited duration.  The sight of a cruiser parked at the curb with an officer observing traffic or of a motorist awaiting a ticket will slow traffic that day and maybe for a couple of days afterward, but speeds will soon return to prior levels.

Most of us have probably observed this phenomenon on freeways where the sight of a police cruiser causes the average speed of the car pack to drop from 75 mph to 65, only to return to 75 within a few miles.

Policing is a bandage on streets that weren’t designed consistent with the intended travel speeds.

Street Uses: Lastly, I want to visit the comment that streets were made for cars.  It’s a particularly ironic, and incorrect, comment in my neighborhood.

I don’t know when the nearby streets were first paved.  But I know that my neighbor’s home was built in 1918, with my home following two years later.  And I don’t think either home was among the first in the neighborhood.

It seems likely that the streets were first laid out in 1910 or before.  And in 1910, the predominant street users would have been adults walking or bicycling to work or to errands, children playing, and horse-drawn carts delivering milk or hauling agricultural products to market.   If there were any cars, they were likely putt-putting along under a speed limit of 10 mph or less.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that automotive industry campaigned to dedicate streets primarily to cars, including inventing the word jaywalking.

I’m not arguing that cars should be excluded from streets.  They serve a legitimate purpose and make our lives more convenient.  But the balance between cars and other possible users of the street has been renegotiated in the past.  There would be nothing wrong with another renegotiation, including one that slows cars to make the street friendlier for all.

I understand that most neighborhood discussions about traffic speeds quickly turn to speed bumps and police.  But there is a wealth of other strategies that work better and create better communities.  We only need to become more knowledgeable.

Next time, I’ll write about the basic stuff of streets, asphalt.  Petaluma recently lost a sustained battle against a new asphalt plant in town.  Years ago, I weighed in on that controversy.  Now, I want to revisit my old words and to note that others are supporting a related position that I took at the time.

Schedule

In recent months, Petaluma Urban Chat has become consumed with the question of the Fairgrounds, resulting in extra meetings and changing locations.  But, our standard meeting time and place remained the second Tuesday of the month, 5:30pm, at the Aqus Café.  This month, that date will fall on April 14th. Let’s gather at Aqus, 2nd and H Streets in Petaluma for an update on the Fairgrounds effort and to discuss future Urban Chat topics.  All are welcome.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Finding Urbanism in the Local Paper

Once one begins to look at the world through urbanist glasses, there are urban-related stories all over.  There were two examples, one on downtown development and one on street speeds, in the most recent edition of the Argus Courier, the weekly Petaluma newspaper.

A year and a half ago, several members of Urban Chat took a Saturday morning walk through Petaluma.  The goal was to emulate the Jane’s Walks being taken throughout the country on the same day, honoring the contributions of urbanist pioneer Jane Jacobs.

Over the course of walk, a moment of insight came as we walked down the passageway from Kentucky Street toward Putnam Plaza.  We stopped to look both directions down American Alley and realized what a potentially great urban place it could be.  In the heart of downtown, lined with solid old buildings and interesting street art, close to transit and numerous retail stores.  Admittedly, the service uses of the alley, including store deliveries and garbage collection, would be a challenge to overcome, but other cities have found ways for urban life and urban services to coexist.

Eighteen months later, Frances Rivetti’s column in the Argus Courier is about new businesses coming to American Alley, with a new art gallery already open and a specialty food shop and a jazz club coming in the New Year.

I won’t claim that our walk or the resulting blog post had any role in the new development.  Instead, I’ll only note that our observations and the new economic activity are parallel signs that urbanism is becoming a shared vision.

Even with the good news of the businesses coming to American Alley, my favorite part of Rivetti’s column was her description of the alley as having “the quintessential urban chic of a backdrop for more student photo shoots than probably anywhere else in the area.”  One more piece of evidence that the coming generations are breaking free of the suburban model.

The same edition of the Argus Courier had a story about a family living on upper B Street whose cat had been killed by a passing car, a car that may have travelling faster than the 30 mph speed limit.  Upset by the feline death, the family was arguing for stop signs along their stretch of street to slow the traffic.

Although the City Engineer determined that the street didn’t meet the warrants needed to justify a new stop sign, the City Council expressed sympathy for the family along with a willingness to look for solutions.

To begin, I’m fully sympathetic with the family’s loss.  My wife and I have three dogs and live on a local street not far from B Street.  We’re constantly aware of the risks from the passing traffic and work hard to keep the dogs safe.

But with that said, the family has identified the wrong solution.  Stop signs don’t noticeably slow peak travel speeds.  Where my wife and I live illustrates the point.  Our block has a 25 mph speed limit and stop signs at both ends of the block.  And yet we often note travel speeds of 30 mph or above, as drivers accelerate to make up for the time they’ve lost by obeying the stop signs.  (Being a prime driving route to Petaluma High also doesn’t help.)  The problem is sufficiently evident that the Police Department occasionally stations cruisers on the street.

So stop signs aren’t a solution.  The real problem is the speed limit itself.  At the 30 mph speed limit on B Street, not only are people more at risk, with pedestrians far more likely to die in collisions with cars than when speed are lower, but drivers are less likely to see loose pets and pets have fewer opportunities to dodge approaching cars.

However, speed limits the direct result of the road design.  As I’ve written before, California speed limits are set by the speed at which we drive.  Build a wider street with fewer elements to reduce speed and people will drive more quickly, resulting in higher speed limits.

By my measurement, B Street is 44 feet wide, unfortunately wide for a street with its level of traffic.  On a recent afternoon, I observed B Street traffic for a few minutes, during which eight cars passed me traveling downhill, a direction for which a City-installed speed measuring sign was displaying velocities.  Of the eight cars, only one exceeded 30 mph, with the others traveling from 2 to 10 mph slower.  It was a small sample, but if a larger sample maintained the same pattern, a 30 mph speed limit would be consistent with the data.

But what if 30 mph isn’t good for the neighborhood or for the pets in the neighborhood?  What can we do?  Under the law, the options are limited, but there may be a few possibilities.  Drivers are sensitive to their travel space and will drive slower when they feel more confined.  For B Street, my suggestion would be start with a couple of gallons of paint.

Today, B Street is divided into two 12-foot driving lanes and two 10-foot parking and bicycle lanes.  It’s a fairly common pavement allocation, but it’s worth noting the most freeways also have 12-foot lanes.  What if we repaint the bike path lines two feet closer to centerline, reducing the travel lanes to 10 feet and widening the bike/parking lanes to 12 feet?

Bicyclists certainly wouldn’t complain about the extra width and the reduced chanced of being “doored” by newly parked drivers.

And ten feet for cars isn’t unreasonable, with the SmartCode that governs much of downtown Petaluma calling for 10-foot lanes on many streets.  (Please ponder the irony for a moment.  The travel lanes on B Street, a quiet residential neighborhood, have more in common with freeways than downtown.  That’s not right.)

It’s been shown that drivers faced with a more confined space, even if only in paint, feel more confined and reduce their speed.  It’s possible that ten-foot lanes on B Street would reduce the speed limit to 25 mph.

And the paint is cheaper than the stop signs, along with likely being more effective.

But perhaps 25 mph, although the lowest speed limit generally allowed in California, still isn’t slow enough.  I’ve previously written that many argue for 20 mph on most streets under the slogan “Twenty is Plenty”.  A speed limit that low would take legislative action, but could change our communities.

And there’s a precedent for an all-encompassing change to lower speeds.  Recently, the administration of New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio implemented new rules reducing the speed limits on most New York streets to 25 mph.  It’s not 20 mph, but it’s a step in that direction and shows the growing momentum of the “Twenty is Plenty” movement.  (It also provides another point of irony to ponder.  While most of New York City now has a 25 mph speed limit, we continue to allow cars to drive through North Bay residential neighborhoods at 30 mph.)

We don’t need any more cats killed. And we don’t need any more pedestrians at risk.  But stop signs aren’t the solution.  Lower speed limits are, whether by paint or by legislative action.

As I was buttoning up this post, an email arrived from StrongTowns with a new post from founder Chuck Marohn about road design and traffic safety.  The pedestrian fatality that he uses as the focus of his post was the result of a different traffic problem than B Street, but the comments that Marohn makes about the state of roadway design are dead on target and worth your time.  Read it.  It may change how you think about traffic safety.

And as you continue your day, keep your eyes open for urbanist insights.  They’re all around us.  I know I’m eagerly awaiting the next edition of the Argus Courier.

Next time, I’ll share a story about an attempt to implement the “fine-grained urbanism” endorsed by Jane Jacobs.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

The Reality of Reducing Neighborhood Speeds

Even if a neighborhood chooses to accept a lower speed limit, the realities of effecting that change can be daunting.

In earlier posts, I wrote that the joint use of public streets was reduced by the advent of the automobile and that some people are pushing back by proposing a maximum speed of 20 mph in all residential neighborhoods.  (Tying together my recent threads on streets and parks, I’ll note that park use would likely improve under a “Twenty is Plenty” policy.  Parents may be more willing to let children walk to a park if cars were well-behaved.)

Let’s assume for a moment that a neighborhood unites behind the “Twenty is Plenty” concept and wishes to reduce the speed limits on their streets.  How should they proceed to implement the change?  Most would probably assume that a petition to the city council would be the right first step.  They’d be wrong.

Cities have a surprisingly small role in setting speed limits.  Instead, rules written in Sacramento are used to set the speed limits, with only a small bit of local autonomy permitted.  And those rules mandate that the speed limits be established based on how fast we actually drive.

The process is simple and objective.  Vehicular speeds are collected by radar when speed limit signs aren’t present.  The speed limit is then set at the 85 percentile of measured speeds.

Most people are startled when they first learn this.  They’re shocked that speed limits are set by how fast we do drive, not how fast we should be driving.  But it’s indicative of how well the automobile lobby has played the public policy game.

To be fair, cities have a small bit of remaining authority.  A City Engineer can unilaterally reduce the speed limit if he believes that there are traffic hazards not visible to the driver.  But those reductions can be challenged in court by a driver who feels wronged, so City Engineers are cautious in their use.

Some may have spotted a possible loophole in the speed limit process.  They may be thinking, “What if we ask neighbors to drive slowly while the speed data is being collected?  The 85th percentile would be pushed downward and our neighborhood would be safer.”

The idea isn’t new.  I recently learned of a North Bay city that tried the trick.  City employees were recruited to slowly cruise through the speed check area.  At first, the plan worked.  A lower speed limit was established and the police began enforcing it rigorously, with speeding tickets being written.

But as happens with most conspiracies, someone blabbed.  The tale got back to the traffic court judge who was heartily displeased.  The collected traffic fines were returned, the speed limit was raised, and a round of hand slaps was administered.  

If we assume that Sacramento isn’t about to change how speed limits are set, what other options do we have?  We can build streets such that the comfort zone of driver is affected, with resulting lower speeds.

In recent years, we’ve already begun seeing some of these driver comfort zone modifications, which are collectively known as traffic calming strategies. 

Calming strategies are often categorized as horizontal or vertical.  Horizontal modifications can include street markings, such as center stripes or the City Repair intersection painting concepts that were discussed last fall.  Other concepts include narrower streets and center medians.  Even roundabouts can temper traffic speeds, unlike stop signs which sometimes result in dashes between intersections.

Vertical modifications can include speed bumps, speed humps, which are wider than speed bumps and allow higher speeds, and speed tables, which are wider yet and usually include crosswalks or other pedestrian accommodations.  The new East Washington Plaza in Petaluma makes extensive use of speed tables.

But there are two problems with traffic calming strategies.  First, they’re costly.  When cities don’t have the funds to fix potholes, street modifications to reduce speeds are likely out of fiscal reach.   Second, public safety agencies, fire, police, and ambulance, often push back.

This isn’t to criticize public safety agencies, but for too long they held too much influence over street geometry.  Streets were built with widths and turning radii such that emergency vehicles could respond as quickly as possible, the street geometry encouraged higher driving speeds thereby pushing up speed limits, and parents began keeping their children inside because of concerns over pedestrian safety.  In one of great ironies of urbanism and vocabulary, public safety became the enemy of public health.

In recent years, public safety agencies have been forced to negotiate emergency access versus pedestrian safety, although not always happily.  Within the past few days, a San Francisco Supervisor and the San Francisco Fire Chief had a public contretemps over street widths in new development.

The balancing act between public safety and public health will hopefully continue.  It’s another reminder of Jeff Speck’s observation that cities should be designed by generalists who can find reasonable balances between alternative goods, rather than by specialists who push only their own agenda.

Even if reducing traffic speeds in residential neighborhoods is a good idea, and I think it is, the path to making those changes won’t be easy.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)