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I hear a helpful (possibly homeless) man yelling "wrong way" probably once a day on my street.
Since we're piling on--all in good fun--I'll add that this area is somehow also the world capital of PT Cruisers. One of the rental car agencies must have cleared them out a few years ago on discount. (Now that I've alerted all of you, you won't be able to un-see it.) Unique feature of the grid: better-than-average odds of getting hit by a wrong way Chrysler.
Post of the day. thanks for getting my mood just a little better off!!
You're referencing the handle/gay district and enema's in your metaphor? I don't think many midtowners would appreciate that...
But I'd also say you probably don't understand the importance of traffic calming. I find it funny that you call it a farce, as if it's something that's not real. I don't mind the one-way streets that currently exist (you do need a few) but if every street was one way, people would be flying around all over the place. Believe it or not, people live down here and don't just commute in to work or on the weekends to party.
However, if more people move into the area, as evidenced by more residential construction, there will be more traffic. Simple as that.
I have no objection to building denser in downtown and Midtown--giving people what they want is always fine with me. However, if even a few significant high-rise condo and apartment towers are built there, it will be necessary to reconvert E/F, G/H, and S/T streets into one-ways.
Why? Because the new condo and apartment dwellers will bring their cars with them. Even if they entirely walk or ride their bicycles around downtown/midtown, they will use their cars to get out of, and back into, downtown/midtown from other cities, which in itself will generate intolerable congestion.
This brings us to the dirty little secret of various "neighborhood" and "environmental" organizations (which often overlap): they decry the paving over of acre after acre of the Sacramento Valley, but when it comes to the realistic alternative of packing more people into their own neighborhoods, they don't mean it. Instead, apartment and condo complexes with densities greater than Midtown city blocks get built out in Citrus Heights or Rancho Cordova.
In the old days, E and F, G and H, and S and T Streets had three lanes going one way.
I would do this differently. I would have two wider and safer one way lanes, with bike lanes on each side, the way P and Q streets currently are.
Perhaps 15th and 16th, 19th and 21st, and J and L Streets could get the same "fewer but wider and safer lanes and bike lanes" treatment.
Note to drivers: this is NOT just a sop to bicyclists; bike lanes allow for easier parallel parking maneuvers and wider and safer, albeit fewer, remaining lanes.
The "Mexico City Solution" to traffic, using paint to make more lanes that are VERY narrow, just does NOT work, as anyone from that hell hole can tell you.
The term "traffic calming" is simply an attempt to put a favorable "spin" on tactics used to ruin traffic flow (that is, obstruct, divert and slow traffic). Proponents of these tactics are usually persons who live along urban streets in areas known as "mixed neighborhoods" who object to motor vehicle traffic passing by their homes.
Although proponents usually couch their complaints in terms like "speeders" and "reckless drivers," the true irritant for "traffic calming" advocates is "heavy" traffic. Their desired objective is to divert traffic to other streets outside their neighborhood. The devices employed to accomplish this diversion of traffic include:
--inappropriate stop signs
--speed humps and bumps
--cement "plugs" blocking streets (metaphoric "butt plugs" if you will)
--lane narrowing obstructions, and
--absurdly low speed limits.
--In some cases, streets have been blocked off and are no longer contiguous. It is ironic that the same people who want to live on "the Grid" and claim they "don't want to live in Suburban Cul-de-sac streets", have in more than a few cases (D Street, G Street, H Street) blocked off the street to thru road traffic and made it no longer contiguous, in effect *creating* cul-de-sacs.
Only traffic lights (properly timed) are justifiable (for example at pedestrian crossings and busy intersections), the rest are simply hazards.
Increased traffic on residential streets is often caused by misguided and ill-informed management of the main arterials and collector streets. These streets are designed to carry most of the traffic, keeping it off of residential streets. Misguided proponents of "traffic calming" always fail to realize that the reason they are seeing more traffic on their residential streets is because the same tactics have already been applied to main arterials and collector streets. These include improper installation of stop signs, mistimed traffic signals, and under-posted speed limits on the major arterials that have no relation to actual vehicle speeds. In Midtown, major arterials were actually REMOVED in an utterly perverted attempt to "calm" traffic, such as smoothly flowing one-way streets that were blocked off or were turned into two-way traffic jams. Throw in construction and congestion, and it is no surprise that residential streets are experiencing increased commuter traffic.
The solution to this problem is not to further obstruct traffic flow by pushing the problem into someone else's neighborhood. The real solutions are:
1. To upgrade and improve the traffic handling capabilities of main thoroughfares. This means implementing physical improvements, and synchronizing traffic controls to accommodate 25-30 MPH actual vehicle speeds. If main streets provide convenient access between home, work and shopping destinations, motorists will use them, and stop taking alternate routes through residential neighborhoods.
2. To reconsider land use away from "mixed neighborhoods" in the affected area. Although it has become vogue to have "mixed neighborhoods" (residential, commercial and light industrial closely juxtaposed) in cities, the downside of mixed neighborhoods is very clear: People from outside the neighborhood will come into the neighborhood for the workplace, commercial interest, or recreational interest, and they will drive there to do so. Even if there is an efficient bus system and lack of parking in the neighborhood to discourage driving, that bus system in itself means heavy traffic! There would be a lot less traffic in a neighborhood if it was only residential.
3. Frankly, one real solution is for people in affected mixed neighborhood areas to GET OVER IT. The price of living in an area "where the action is" (an area within walking distance to lots of cafes, "night life", nifty boutiques, and office space) is to have increased traffic. That's simply a fact of life.
Midtown is located between downtown Sacramento and the Cal State University area, and contains many office workspaces, night clubs, cafes open late hours, historical landmarks like Sutter's Fort, two major hospitals, and an industrial park located on a former cannery site. All of which will bring in traffic into and through the area.
The "butt-plugs" who lobbied for these traffic hazards live in Midtown. Middle-of-town. Get it? If they wanted nice quiet neighborhoods, they should go live out in more residential neighborhoods without the commercial and office space nearby.
4. To construct bypasses when possible, like the Richards / Elvas bypass, but that was blocked by the NIMBYs of East Sacramento ("the Fabulous 30s-40s-50s"). Perhaps those people are *even more* constipated than the Midtowners when it comes to traffic. If there are people who block a sensible way to take traffic around Midtown, those people truly ARE "butt-plugs" and if opening up the closed off Midtown streets is a traffic enema, then a Richards-Elvas connector is a traffic high colonic!
Last edited by NickB1967; 06-29-2015 at 10:36 AM..
Whoa, NickB seems really obsessed with that particular orifice. What would Dr. Freud say? Denial ain't a river in Egypt? Or does a one-track mind just have an affinity for one-way streets?
Hey, if the metaphor works, use it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
Based on the responses above, and my own experience watching people drive poorly downtown, the folks who get confused and go the wrong way on downtown streets are mostly visitors, not central city residents. So it's not all that popular with either party IMO. One-way traffic on downtown streets is an experiment that failed a long time ago, based on the assumption that fast-moving traffic was safer traffic--an assumption that turns out to be false, since faster-moving objects hit things harder. Conversion to two-way makes those streets more livable and comfortable, and doesn't really slow down traffic all that much, if the street grid is open enough to distribute traffic onto multiple streets.
But that is just it--it isn't. Once flowing E, F, G, and H streets have been blocked off. J and L won't be able to handle it, especially if new construction brings high-rises into the area.
Case in point of how dangerous midtown is - I just about creamed a car last Friday that was crossing I Street on either 19th or 18th Street. I was heading westbound and they were headed northbound and darted out suddenly after being hidden behind a delivery truck double-parked on I Street. They decided to dart out there fast rather than inch out to make sure there wasn't any cross traffic.
NickB, I think you're assuming that everyone in Midtown has some sort of hive-mind and all think the same thing. Not the case. Where you perceive irony, what really happens is a difference of opinion in what is, in reality, a very diverse neighborhood in terms of opinion and outlook. The half-street closures, in retrospect, were not such a good idea. Some of the elements of traffic calming, including two-way conversion, pedestrian "islands" in mid-street, adding bike lanes, and curb bulb-outs were good ideas that help regulate travel speeds, and in some cases, like angled parking, increase parking capacity. And speed limits in the central city are almost universally 30 MPH today--not sure where you're seeing travel speed limits lower than the 25-30 MPH you're calling for. However, when more central city streets were one-way/three-lane, traffic on those streets was seldom limited to 30 MPH, the middle lane was often occupied by folks going 50 MPH or faster trying to beat lights or pass traffic on either outer lane.
Every central city intersection is a pedestrian crossing. Most don't have stop signs, let alone stoplights.
Sacramento's central city never had "major arterials"--all the original streets were designed at the same width, with J and K Street becoming major arterials largely by defalult, due to their location along transit lines. And those streets were two-way until the early 1950s--despite your assumption that one-way streets were the historic pattern, they were in fact an aberration. The central city's population was a lot higher than it is today through the 1950s, it was the assumption that downtowns were places nobody should live that went hand-in-hand with the idea to convert two-way downtown streets to one-way highways to shuffle suburbanites in and out of downtown. The problem is, they just fill to capacity and slow down again.
NickB, your two-lane street preference (like P or Q) is what is called a "complete street": sidewalks, street parking, bike lanes, and two standard-width lanes (the 2 lanes are no wider than each lane was when they had 3 lanes) are basically the same thing I'm talking about, although two-way traffic works even better, because two lanes on two streets carries just as much traffic as a couplet of two-lane one-way streets, but they're harder to maneuver around because one-way traffic limits movement within the street grid and confuses suburbanites unused to one-way traffic.
Increased central city population doesn't necessarily increase traffic, at least not as a linear function--as central city population density increases, sure some folks will bring their cars, but they are more likely to store their cars on-site for routine neighborhood tasks instead of having to use them for every single task--despite bleating about the impracticality of walking or biking to the store for groceries, many people do it.
Perhaps the blockage is between your own ears, NickB? It sounds like a lot of what you're describing doesn't match the reality on the ground in Midtown--and the scenarios and people more the products of your own imagination than reality. Perhaps a little mental Ex-Lax is in order for you? Walking and biking is a good way to relieve constipation induced by sitting in a car so many hours per week...
However, if more people move into the area, as evidenced by more residential construction, there will be more traffic. Simple as that.
I have no objection to building denser in downtown and Midtown--giving people what they want is always fine with me. However, if even a few significant high-rise condo and apartment towers are built there, it will be necessary to reconvert E/F, G/H, and S/T streets into one-ways.
Why? Because the new condo and apartment dwellers will bring their cars with them. Even if they entirely walk or ride their bicycles around downtown/midtown, they will use their cars to get out of, and back into, downtown/midtown from other cities, which in itself will generate intolerable congestion.
This brings us to the dirty little secret of various "neighborhood" and "environmental" organizations (which often overlap): they decry the paving over of acre after acre of the Sacramento Valley, but when it comes to the realistic alternative of packing more people into their own neighborhoods, they don't mean it. Instead, apartment and condo complexes with densities greater than Midtown city blocks get built out in Citrus Heights or Rancho Cordova.
In the old days, E and F, G and H, and S and T Streets had three lanes going one way.
I would do this differently. I would have two wider and safer one way lanes, with bike lanes on each side, the way P and Q streets currently are.
Perhaps 15th and 16th, 19th and 21st, and J and L Streets could get the same "fewer but wider and safer lanes and bike lanes" treatment.
Note to drivers: this is NOT just a sop to bicyclists; bike lanes allow for easier parallel parking maneuvers and wider and safer, albeit fewer, remaining lanes.
The "Mexico City Solution" to traffic, using paint to make more lanes that are VERY narrow, just does NOT work, as anyone from that hell hole can tell you.
The term "traffic calming" is simply an attempt to put a favorable "spin" on tactics used to ruin traffic flow (that is, obstruct, divert and slow traffic). Proponents of these tactics are usually persons who live along urban streets in areas known as "mixed neighborhoods" who object to motor vehicle traffic passing by their homes.
Although proponents usually couch their complaints in terms like "speeders" and "reckless drivers," the true irritant for "traffic calming" advocates is "heavy" traffic. Their desired objective is to divert traffic to other streets outside their neighborhood. The devices employed to accomplish this diversion of traffic include:
--inappropriate stop signs
--speed humps and bumps
--cement "plugs" blocking streets (metaphoric "butt plugs" if you will)
--lane narrowing obstructions, and
--absurdly low speed limits.
--In some cases, streets have been blocked off and are no longer contiguous. It is ironic that the same people who want to live on "the Grid" and claim they "don't want to live in Suburban Cul-de-sac streets", have in more than a few cases (D Street, G Street, H Street) blocked off the street to thru road traffic and made it no longer contiguous, in effect *creating* cul-de-sacs.
Only traffic lights (properly timed) are justifiable (for example at pedestrian crossings and busy intersections), the rest are simply hazards.
Increased traffic on residential streets is often caused by misguided and ill-informed management of the main arterials and collector streets. These streets are designed to carry most of the traffic, keeping it off of residential streets. Misguided proponents of "traffic calming" always fail to realize that the reason they are seeing more traffic on their residential streets is because the same tactics have already been applied to main arterials and collector streets. These include improper installation of stop signs, mistimed traffic signals, and under-posted speed limits on the major arterials that have no relation to actual vehicle speeds. In Midtown, major arterials were actually REMOVED in an utterly perverted attempt to "calm" traffic, such as smoothly flowing one-way streets that were blocked off or were turned into two-way traffic jams. Throw in construction and congestion, and it is no surprise that residential streets are experiencing increased commuter traffic.
The solution to this problem is not to further obstruct traffic flow by pushing the problem into someone else's neighborhood. The real solutions are:
1. To upgrade and improve the traffic handling capabilities of main thoroughfares. This means implementing physical improvements, and synchronizing traffic controls to accommodate 25-30 MPH actual vehicle speeds. If main streets provide convenient access between home, work and shopping destinations, motorists will use them, and stop taking alternate routes through residential neighborhoods.
2. To reconsider land use away from "mixed neighborhoods" in the affected area. Although it has become vogue to have "mixed neighborhoods" (residential, commercial and light industrial closely juxtaposed) in cities, the downside of mixed neighborhoods is very clear: People from outside the neighborhood will come into the neighborhood for the workplace, commercial interest, or recreational interest, and they will drive there to do so. Even if there is an efficient bus system and lack of parking in the neighborhood to discourage driving, that bus system in itself means heavy traffic! There would be a lot less traffic in a neighborhood if it was only residential.
3. Frankly, one real solution is for people in affected mixed neighborhood areas to GET OVER IT. The price of living in an area "where the action is" (an area within walking distance to lots of cafes, "night life", nifty boutiques, and office space) is to have increased traffic. That's simply a fact of life.
Midtown is located between downtown Sacramento and the Cal State University area, and contains many office workspaces, night clubs, cafes open late hours, historical landmarks like Sutter's Fort, two major hospitals, and an industrial park located on a former cannery site. All of which will bring in traffic into and through the area.
The "butt-plugs" who lobbied for these traffic hazards live in Midtown. Middle-of-town. Get it? If they wanted nice quiet neighborhoods, they should go live out in more residential neighborhoods without the commercial and office space nearby.
4. To construct bypasses when possible, like the Richards / Elvas bypass, but that was blocked by the NIMBYs of East Sacramento ("the Fabulous 30s-40s-50s"). Perhaps those people are *even more* constipated than the Midtowners when it comes to traffic. If there are people who block a sensible way to take traffic around Midtown, those people truly ARE "butt-plugs" and if opening up the closed off Midtown streets is a traffic enema, then a Richards-Elvas connector is a traffic high colonic!
Nick, I'm not sure what it is exactly that you're trying to solve or lobby for. I do know that you are a bit misguided in some of your ideas on traffic flow and relieving pressure. Before I begin, however, you mentioned the influx of people moving into downtown and claiming there will be more traffic. I'm not sure how that would even work. As soon as Friday hits, my car is parked till work on Monday. Residents of urban landscape don't care how many cars are on the road, because they aren't driving.
Now lets go through your solutions:
1. Timed signal lighting does have it's placed, and is used on 15th and 16th. Heavy traffic volumes can throw off the timing however, and it can feel like you hit every light. Although, I'm not sure what the problem is with taking an alternative route? Imagine having the option between one large corridor (16th st) and many smaller ones (pick any other parallel streets). Which one did you pick to use instead? I can bet that it's not the one I picked. And that's the point. Trickling cars through side streets ultimately relieves congestion on large arterials.
2. No. Sorry, you're way off base here. Mixed use developments is what revitalizes streets and spurs new growth. Why are you catering to people driving in who don't live here? They will find a way to make it work, I promise. But higher density living creates a much more vibrant core and ultimately takes cars off the street (remember people aren't driving down here). People are able to walk/ride to these businesses where they would otherwise need to drive. No need to drive to get to these places = less cars on the road.
3. Who's complaining? Anyone who lives in a mixed used development down here probably loves it! They can leave anytime. Lofts are going for $1600-1800 down here. They wouldn't pay that if they were complaining all the time...
4. I'm not really sure what this solution is but it sounds like an awful lot of concrete. Have you ever just road your bike down M street? Visited East Portal Park? East sac is awesome.
Bonus tip for roadway widths:
- The larger the lane, the safer people feel driving. Good right? Wrong. Large 12' lanes is what they use on Freeways and makes you feel safe driving 70 mph. Large comfortable lanes make drivers feel like they can travel faster on residential and lower speed streets. This makes it dangerous for pedestrians and unappealing to walk anywhere. I don't want to walk along a race track... Decrease the lanes to 11' (10' if you're Davis), include 5' class II bike lanes, and 8' sidewalk and you got yourself an awesome complete street.
At the end of the day, the best way to relieve congestion is to get people out of their cars. You know what's hard to do in a completely residential neighborhood? Walk to the store to pick up dinner for the night. Mixed use developments get people walking and riding their bikes again because these businesses are easily accessible. Try thinking about all of this if you didn't own a car.
And there's no need to theorize about any of this--there are 30,000+ people already living in the "mixed use developments" we call Midtown and Downtown. Been "mixed use" since the Gold Rush, population has ebbed and flowed with the cultural tides but ready for the next ebb. It's flowing in, but doesn't seem to be driving in.
I live in Midtown and I actually was more scared driving in Florin than here. Some people there straight up do not know how to drive.
The one-way thing is in every city probably. I work near the Capitol and see people heading the wrong way on 10th fairly often. What happens most frequently, though, is people not getting how stop signs work. I was almost T-boned by some lady ready to blow past the stop sign. Sigh.
Fortunately, I walk when I can and I can walk most places.
I live in Midtown and I actually was more scared driving in Florin than here. Some people there straight up do not know how to drive.
The one-way thing is in every city probably. I work near the Capitol and see people heading the wrong way on 10th fairly often. What happens most frequently, though, is people not getting how stop signs work. I was almost T-boned by some lady ready to blow past the stop sign. Sigh.
Fortunately, I walk when I can and I can walk most places.
My wife and I lived downtown from 1998 until 2009. When we weren't required to go to the Capitol (four blocks) we walked to our offices which were about a half mile from home. For the last year, se was retired and my office was changed to two miles away but still an easy walk. What we found out was that crosswalks notwithstanding, walking could be as dangerous as driving.
My wife and I lived downtown from 1998 until 2009. When we weren't required to go to the Capitol (four blocks) we walked to our offices which were about a half mile from home. For the last year, se was retired and my office was changed to two miles away but still an easy walk. What we found out was that crosswalks notwithstanding, walking could be as dangerous as driving.
Yep my house is about two miles away from the Capitol. And you are right about walking. I know that Sacramento has a lot of pedestrian fatalities compared to other cities. The cops were even out and about by de Vere's last weekend giving out infosheets on it. I don't have too many issues walking though because I am super careful about it. I don't run out in front of cars in the middle of the night wearing dark clothes, etc. Perhaps I have luck on my side too.
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