Twenty is Plenty
Road? Street? Stroad?
When faced with a lot of input from people on Ford Street, about speeding cars, and cars being totaled, pushed into yards where children were just playing, I wanted to help address those concerns. In parallel I have observed in my own purely residential neighborhood plenty of speeding cars both on my own, and nearby streets. So, working with the city engineer and police chief we talked about ways to immediately address safety, as well as longer term. Like Denver and Boulder and hundreds of towns around the world, we discussed moving to a “Twenty is Plenty” approach to speeds in town. That is, the speed limit on residential streets will be dropped from 25 to 20 mph, unless posted otherwise. With the addition of photo radar and enforcement capability that will give us, I am hopeful that cars will actually go at slower speeds which may have some knock-on benefits. While Ford was the first test case for this, which was a problem because it is really a Stroad (see below), the city council has given thumbs up to moving this forward more broadly to more thoroughly address safety in residential neighborhoods. We may see the speed on Ford from 10th to 7th return to 25 mph, but North of 7th there starts to be residences, which makes it feel unsafe with cars speeding by. Some of my rationale:
People will feel more comfortable walking and biking on residential streets, which is a real issue where we have narrow sidewalks with sloping curbs that are hard to navigate.
As more people feel comfortable walking and biking, then some drivers may join them, actually reducing traffic.
Any accidents that do occur will be of lower severity, less likely to cause injury or property damage
More quiet enjoyment.
Longer term, and the reason I put the picture at the top that I did, we have to address road design. There are definitely people opposed to dropping the speed limit. And they rightly point out that road design is the controlling factor on the speed at which people drive. I have previously written about Stroads. And Ford is very much a Stroad. It is neither a well designed street, nor a well designed road. As such, it feels unsafe for most users. Ford needs a serious redesign so that all users have a better experience, and it is not going to be easy or cheap given the constraints. So, in the meantime, we will do what we can to make it safer. I hope it rises to the top of our transportation and bike/ped masterplans, and will do what I can to push it up in priority.
The US is uniquely bad in this area, by the way.