Well I just got back from the meeting they had about this street improvement project at our local community center. It was actually an informal stand up and look at their info boards and ask questions thing really. I ended up speaking to the same guy I spoke to on the phone. Turns out the dedicated parking lane is only going to be the 6 or so block section I live on, and the rest will be an east and west bound lane and a middle turn lane. It seems to me if that middle turn lane is street all the way with no islands where turns aren't permitted, people might be tempted to drive in it.
Some other good notes besides the parking lane not stretching the entire length of the street is they are going to resurface it with concrete, not pavement, so no worries about the poor quality of pavement that has been used here for far too long. The bike lane along side the road is also going to be protected by a 6" curb, and it will likely have a reflective strip on it to make it stand out at night. Other than that, the only good note was it seems this design is not entirely set in stone, or should I say concrete. There was one other person there, an elderly woman, who like me, was not pleased with the idea of half as many lanes.
I presented an idea, but I doubt it will be even considered, let alone used, because with our police force being half the size it used to be, there probably wouldn't be enough man power for it. I also don't know if it would even be legal with our laws here. The idea is to keep it 4 lane like it is now, but have one lane dedicated to HO vehicles only like stretches of the freeway has. Those freeway stretches are monitored by the State Highway Patrol though. This would have to be monitored by city police. I'm only proposing it be done on an arterial street connecting to the freeway and light rail stations though, so not very many.
I'm thinking it would be best to have this HO lane heading toward the freeway, as our morning rush hour should take priority to make sure people get to work on time. After 12 noon this lane would switch back to all vehicle access. The monitoring info from this HO lane could also help them assess how well the conversion to mass transit is working, and help them decide where to go from there. The thing is though, putting up traffic monitoring cameras, and having people or systems monitor them is also expensive, but the data they get from it could be very valuable and avoid costly design errors. I worry about it being legal because here we have a TON of woke people that worry more about their personal privacy than laws being broken, which is why landlords cannot screen or evict tenants based on noise and other common misdemeanor complaints.
As far as 2 lanes potentially equaling 4, all I can say is on the freeway where we have bottleneck areas, the traffic is only slow in those areas, it then speeds up pretty good. So I'm not sure I buy that 2 lanes are as good as 4. Only rarely do those bottleneck areas drastically slow down every lane for a long distance. More often people are ahead of time aware of the need to move over to give them room to merge, so you then have two slow lanes, and two faster moving ones. Another example I can give you is anytime on a 4 lane road 2 lanes are taken up by an accident, road work vehicles, whatever, the flow is always slower at that point, then considerably faster after. If it were only two lanes, there wouldn't be any of that faster flow that handles more vehicles, it would be slow pretty much all the way, because we ARE talking about a street that has many places to turn off it with traffic lights.
I'll end by saying this decision reminds me of the ding bat mayor we had not long ago, that decided along with the DA that decriminalizing misdemeanors and low level felonies would be a good way to cut costs. What followed was a lot of woke broke people that flocked here after the mayor declared it a "Sanctuary City", and a whole lot of homeless people that they let camp pretty much anywhere they want. We've had our police defunded too because of wokies that like to blame the police for everything, and good cops and businesses leave town, and even tourists exclaim in documentaries when asked if they'll vacation here again, "No, not unless they do something about these problems". They were talking about problems like the smell of urine and feces, on stoops where homeless sleep near public markets they used to love to shop at.
Regarding the light rail vs the freeway BeardyHat, I was telling them at the meeting I could see the appeal of that likely being faster than the rush hour freeway traffic, the problem is though the city officials have declared some time ago that there's only one area near I-5 in the north end where a park and ride is allowed. The reason they told me is they want the area near the light rail stations to be "High Density", meaning high rise apt and/or condo buildings near it. I told them that sounds like an interchange gridlock nightmare waiting to happen, like they have in LA. Why, because even if those apts/condos have no parking, you can't keep the tenants from using Uber, Lyft, etc (not necessarily to work, but other times). The other thing I conveyed to them is you have to consider that those with cars, if there's no park and rides near the stations, have to take at least one bus besides the light rail just to get to the train, and two if their work place isn't near the train line. At that point that faster train ride might not be so appealing.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram