Comments on: What do YOU think?

By: Henry Morgenstein

Henry Morgenstein — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 20:34:49 +0000

It is absolutely wonderful to hear so many people rallying around the concept of “traffic calming” — and yet I know, as a car driver I know, that those words are almost a red rag to a bull. I’m in a car (we are all except the most dedicated bicycle riders, in cars at some point) and I see arrayed against me an arsenal of restrictive signs: slow down, stop, children playing. Suddenly, and for no seemingly good reason, the road I am on narrows, or zig zaggs, or there is a bulge in the sidewalk.
It is almost an obstacle course, a perverse maze, a restriction on my freedom, and as a car driver I hate it. It goes against the grain.
However, I do believe the ultimate aim is, in cities, to slow cars down. We need to make the car driver feel it is his choice to slow down. He/she made the decision. There is no outside force. Common sense, the visual landscape, the very feel of the road makes him want to slow down.
I am going to quote long passages from the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, because the book says it best. A man called “Monderman had been called to rework a village…[he] did not have the budget for traffic-calming infrastructure. At a loss he merely suggested that the road simply be made more ‘villagelike.’ If the road looked more like a village road and less like the highways leading out of town, people would act accordingly….’I thought this must go wrong. There were no flowerpots, no chicanes. It was just a simple road in a village, nothing more.’ A month after the project was finished Monderman took a radar gun and measured the speed of cars passing through the village….the speed had dropped so much that he could not get a reading. ’The gun only functioned at thirty kilometers per hour,’ he recalled.”
“What had happened? Monderman, in essence, had created confusion by blending the car, bike, and pedestrian realms. What had been a wide road with clearly marked delineations was suddenly something more complex.”
I am on page 192 of Vanderbilt’s book and I could continue to quote the rest of the page and half of the following page. For instance, “ there is…a quite low curb….we have a feeling we belong to one another, when you isolate people from each other by a high curb, ’this is my space, this is mine,’ drivers drive faster. When you have a feeling that at this moment a child could drop in front of my car, you slow down.’”
“’psychological traffic calming.’ Rather than hit people over the head with speed bumps they would resent and signs they would ignore, better results could be achieved if drivers were not actually aware that they were slowing down, or why. ’Mental speed bumps.’ is the delightful phrase used by David Engwicht….Engwicht argues that intrigue and uncertainty — the things that active cities are filled with — are the best remedies for traffic problems. Put a child’s bike on the side of the road instead of a speed bump; hang a weird sculpture instead of a speed limit sign.”
“’That experience changed my whole idea about how to change behavior,’ Monderman told me [Tom Vanderbilt]. ’It proved that when you used the context of the village as a source of information, people are absolutely willing to change their behavior.”
“woonerven — the word translates roughly into ’living yards’ — began to spring up in European cities in the early 1970s….suggesting that it was people who lived in cities and that cars were merely guests. Neighborhood streets were merely ‘rooms’, to be driven through, at no higher than walking speeds of 5 to 10 miles per hour, with drivers being mindful of the furniture and décor….Even today woonerven plans seem radical, with children’s sandboxes sitting cheek-by-jowl to the street and trees planted in the middle of traffic.”
I have quoted extensively from the book because I cannot begin to say it as well as the book says it. The idea is still highly radical: do away with signs, make the car a guest, slow drivers down through psychological speed bumps, not physical speed bumps. But the greatest beauty of this scheme is that it costs very-very little money. Yes, there must be some road narrowing, some planting of trees in the middle of the street — but the essence is to make the whole setting so complex, so much like a real village — with bicycles & children & trees and dogs and everything else that makes a village vibrant — that car drivers must be pleasantly alert: look at all the activity around you. You are only one part of a complex equation, and you must slow down, navigate this complex really, pleasant, village landscape.
Enjoy it all, don’t speed through it as if it were just one more piece of the highway.

By: chrisbzdok

chrisbzdok — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:01:58 +0000

Thank you Phill – it’s nice to get your perspective on here. best wishes, Chris

By: Phill Orth

Phill Orth — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:50:26 +0000

West Bay Waterfront patience

I worked for over 30 years to help continue progress on a open and public waterfront in the city. I was able to see everything from the Open Space Purchase, the C & O Waterfront property puchase, the Stiffler property acquisition and what I was most proud of the removal of the power plant and the development of a updated and expanded marina. While I can appreciate the desire to make improvements along the water let’s not lose site of the fact that public projects take a long time. This is to allow the community plenty of time to think about and respond to plans put forward and to allow time to finance the costs in a responsible and prudent manner. Let’s be patient in our efforts to implement future phases of our waterfront development. Good things that are meant to last for generations take time to accomplish.

By: Mary Kitchener

Mary Kitchener — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:40:42 +0000

Oh please! the grand vision… sorry, whata minute or two…I’m, laughing uncontrolably! The big social engineering peice of bunk that cost a million dollars or more! NO one has yet to see thier beautiful world report. Where is it? What a waste of money. Yet again another socially engineered project brought to you by Michigan Land Use Institute. Just a bunch of grant writers that keep their machine well oiled and people in nice salaries. Yet when you attend one of their “communtiy” classes or even get farming (lol that was funny) they have no clue or outcome plan.

Just like the Grand Vision. Could have hired some local folks to tell us we all are wrong in the way we live! The bridge across the Boradman river should have been done years ago. I am a true environmentalist, yet I still drive across bridges and read papers and burn fire wood. It’s so disgusting the fight over this bridge that would be extremely well engineered and envirtonmentally designed, then to look dowqn the road and se the wastful and neglectful eye sore of the TCLP Cass Road Dam. Power could have been generated there, up-keep should have been on-going.

Then you have the same people that want the dams taken out and the beauty of the area preserved and no Hammond/Harmond bridge, as the same that have brought you the wasteland they created along miles of the Boardman River. With millions down the drain over the years in study after study by the sponsors of the Grand Vision and the continuously wasteful TCTALUS; the best thing they could do is go pound sand. It seems to have the same value.

By: Bill Palladino

Bill Palladino — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:09:58 +0000

Just to be clear… this is the regular monthly meeting of TC TALUS. (Traverse City Transportation and Land Use Study group). It was the ground-breaking consensus driven work of this group that created the Grand Vision in the first place. It is in fact their job to review, make comments, recommendations, and changes as necessary to all consultant reports from that project. They were the conveners of the Grand Vision, and are still the fiduciary for all funds associated with the original Hartmann-Hammond Bridge fund.

While I applaud you in raising the issue, I’m pretty sure you’re picking the wrong battle with the wrong people at the wrong time. It would be a waste of time to have a large group of irate citizens show up to the TC TALUS meeting. The issue at hand tomorrow appears to be softening the language for the sake of clarity. There is no indication that TC TALUS will be attempting to “re-include” a bridge project. A simple email to the chair, (Evan Smith) and a phone call to MLUI confirmed this for me. And I won’t surprise or offend anyone on TC TALUS by telling you that these are the most mundane and boring of meetings! So come prepared to be underwhelmed.

Go ahead and send some people to the meeting. That is a good thing. But please, learn the facts first, and short of that learn the facts second while at the meeting. Please don’t jump to knee-jerk conclusions. It serves no-one.

We need watchdogs, and I truly appreciate you playing that role. However, there are greater battles yet to come which will truly be worth your time. Let’s save our energy for those, and be more strategic about what we’re after.

Thanks,

Bill

By: M'Lynn Hartwell

M'Lynn Hartwell — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:59:09 +0000

Please join us at the Tuesday August 17 at the Michigan Works office on Garfield at 10am.

It appears MDOT, the County Road Commission, and Tim Lodge (the Traverse City Engineer who created a great deal of controversy over the 8th street project failure) now want to edit the final recommendations from the paid consultants to re-include the Hartman-Hammond Bridge in the Grand Vision regional plan. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the Hartman-Hammond bridge is an ill conceived concept that will not respond adequately to the transportation needs of this region. Undermining consultant recommendations and public option and allowing a handful of special interests to place this bridge option back in the Grand Vision regional plan is not acceptable.

Also, the final report to the Grand Vision regional plan must include the full and complete cost / benefit analysis for all of the suggestions that actually may help address changing transportation needs in our region.

Please urge them to leave the consultants report intact as reported, and include the complete cost / benefit analysis report as part of the Grand Vision plan.

By: Franklin street

Franklin street — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 05:59:04 +0000

I was wondering about the city owned property at Franklin Street near the old train station. It’s been a large open plot for as long as I can remember. I was wondering if the city could rent out garden plots to people in the summer.

By: chrisbzdok

chrisbzdok — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:55:52 +0000

Larry, good question. The police chief does not report to me, he reports to the city manager, and the city manager reports to the city commission, of which I am a member. Thus it is up to the city commission to discuss and resolve issues on a policy level and then for the city manager to work with his department heads (which includes police chief, fire chief, engineer, public services, etc) to implement. That is what I hope we will accomplish on the issue at hand.

By: larry lawrence

larry lawrence — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:18:45 +0000

Mr. Mayor,

Just a question. Does the police chief report to you? Could you fire him if you so desired?

Larry Lawrence

By: Tim Maylone

Tim Maylone — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:21:35 +0000

You are invited to visit er-bam.net
This is a grass-roots citizens group building cooperation with local providers to build a strong wireless infrastructure (broadband) to create new economic opportunities.