TIRED OF TAX INCREASES?

Your property tax will increase by 2%.
If this bond is passed.
VOTE NO
ON THE RALEIGH ROAD BOND ISSUE
ON Tuesday, October 11TH
see tax rate and fees

The Wake County Taxpayers Association reminds you that it is your money when liberals raise taxes and spend more instead of setting priorities. Bond issues for road improvements should be among funding priorities in the budget..not tacked onto unnecessary spending and causing another tax increase. We say taxes are high enough. Send the message vote NO on the bond issue on Tuesday. Priority spending is the better way. (See ROAD BOND ISSUE for details)

TRAFFIC CALMING
- THE END OF THE AUTOMOBILE?

There was a time when traffic calming was designed to promote safe driving on streets and roads. Now, traffic calming is used to encourage walking, cycling, and public transportation. It is also the primary method to discourage automobile use. Although some people consider radar, stop signs, and educational efforts to be traffic calming, the term usually applies to physical measures that either slow traffic speed and/or reduce traffic volumes. One of the most popular themes of traffic calming is the narrowing of streets (skinny streets). Another objective is to limit the field of view for the driver because when a driver can not see far ahead, driver speed must be reduced.

Although traffic calming does have some safety benefit, it creates a greater harm to life by delaying emergency vehicles such as fire trucks and ambulances. One study "concluded that each bump or circle would delay fire trucks by up to 10 seconds - seconds that can be critical when people's lives are involved". Another study "found that traffic calming loses 37 lives to heart attacks caused by a delay in emergency service vehicles for every life saved due to auto-pedestrian collisions". (1)

TRAFFIC CALMING METHODS

• CONVERSION OF ONE-WAY STREETS TO TWO-WAY STREETS (Increases traffic congestion and driver stress)
• CONSTRUCTION OF YIELD STREETS (Produces traffic congestion and blockage)
• ON-STREET PARALLEL PARKING (Narrows the street to increase congestion)
• RED-LIGHT CAMERAS (Increases safety but intimidates all drivers)
• INTENTIONALLY BADLY-TIMED TRAFFIC LIGHTS (Increases traffic congestion and driver aggravation)
• INTENTIONALLY BADLY-REPAIRED STREETS (Promotes automobile damage and driver frustration)
• PLANTING TREES ALONG THE SIDES OF THE STREET (Street appears narrow)
• REQUIRING THAT BUILDINGS BE CONSTRUCTED AS CLOSELY AS POSSIBLE TO THE STREET (Street appears narrow and prevents street widening)
• ERECTING SHARE THE ROAD WITH BICYCLES SIGNS (Planned to encourage driving slower and preparing drivers to accept the coming bicycle age)
• CREATING BICYCLE ONLY LANES (Increases traffic congestion)
• CREATING BUS ONLY LANES (Increases traffic congestion and frustration)
• PAINTING LINES ON STREET EDGES (Narrows the street)
• REQUIRING 90 DEGREE ANGLE TURNS AT INTERSECTIONS (Increases driving difficulty over softly curved yield turn lanes)
• SPEED BUMPS (Produces driver aggravation and automobile damage)
• SPEED HUMPS (Produces driver aggravation)
• SPEED TABLES (Produces driver aggravation)
• RAISED PEDESTRIAN WALKWAYS (Slows traffic and increases congestion)
• TEXTURED SURFACES AND RAISED INTERSECTIONS (Slows traffic speed)
• TRAFFIC CIRCLES OR ROUNDABOUTS (Increases traffic congestion by limiting a driver's view)
• CURB EXTENSIONS (Street narrowing)
• CHICANES (Creates street curving, narrowing, and driver stress)
• BULB OUTS (Street narrowing and traffic congestion)
• NECK DOWNS, NUBS, OR KNUCKLES (Double bulb outs - extreme street narrowing and increased congestion)
• CHOKERS OR CHOKE POINTS (Causes extreme street narrowing and congestion)
• MEDIAN ISLANDS (Street narrowing)
• MEDIAN BARRIERS (Needed for safety in some areas, when not needed it blocks traffic, creating congestion)
• DIVERTERS (Blocks a lane of traffic creating congestion)
• FORCED TURN LANES (Increases aggravation for those caught in this lane by mistake)
• REMOVING RIGHT-TURN ONLY LANES (Creates traffic back-ups)
• REMOVING LEFT-TURN ONLY LANES (Backs up those behind you who are not turning and creates a traffic mess)
• PARTIAL STREET CLOSURES (Gives you a hint: stop driving your car)
• COMPLETE STREET CLOSURES (Clear message: sell or junk your car)

ANALYSIS

Of course, traffic calming has some valid uses. However, it should be kept in mind that anything can be used constructively or destructively. Traffic calming advocates intend only to use these measures in a manner destructive to automobiles. This is because of the "Living Streets" philosophy which believes that automobiles violate the streets, owned exclusively by pedestrians. A similar philosophy is based on the book "Livable Streets" written by Donald Appleyard (1928-1982), a professor of urban planning at the University of California-Berkeley. Appleyard's plan called for recruiting activists named stakeholders to sell traffic calming to unsuspecting neighbors on "streets where residents requested help to reduce speeding and accidents" (2). After the neighborhood streets are calmed, the techniques are applied to busy corridor streets, leading to traffic congestion madness and eventually the ultimate goal of calmers: create cities completely free of automobiles, leaving walking, cycling, and government-controlled mass transit as the only means of transportation.

In addition to the intimidation, frustration, and increased possibility of an accident, the techniques can be very harmful to your car. It is possible to damage the front-end alignment, parts of your car under the body (such as exhaust system), and even the frame of the vehicle itself. Also, remember that this is not a complete list of traffic calming techniques. The number of possible methods is limited only by the imagination of your local traffic engineering department.

Advocates claim that they want to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution; but, traffic calming increases both traffic congestion and air pollution.

Advocates believe that increased congestion will torment drivers enough to encourage them to reduce their driving and switch to walking, cycling, or public transportation. Increased congestion also gives justification to the Federal Transit Administration to provide federal funding for government-controlled light-rail public transportation projects.

Advocates also know that increased air pollution will allow the Environmental Protection Agency, using the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, to take over transportation planning for a region. This law gives the EPA the authority, if air pollution exceeds a certain level, to stop funding for road construction and require that funding be spent on government-controlled mass transit.

USEFUL RESOURCES

NOTES

1. Randal O'Toole, The Vanishing Automobile and other Urban Myths, How Smart Growth Will Harm American Cities, (The Thoreau Institute, Bandon, Oregon, 2001), page 352.
2. Ibid page 113

TRAFFIC CALMING CAN COST LIVES

37 lives lost. A quote from the book, The Vanishing Automobile and other Urban Myths by Randal O'Toole. "Fire districts and other emergency service providers often have serious objections to traffic calming devices that slow traffic. The Portland Fire Bureau studied speed bumps and traffic circles with video cameras and concluded that each bump or circle would delay fire trucks by up to 10 seconds - seconds that can be critical when people's lives are involved. Political considerations muted the fire bureau's objections. But some analysts believe that traffic calming could end up costing far more lives than it could possibly save. Traffic calming devices are a tradeoff of the perception of increased safety from speeding vehicles for the real risk to citizen survivability from delays to emergency response, says Boulder resident Kathleen Calongne. According to calculations by physicist Ronald Bowman, the deaths from impediments to emergency services are likely to far exceed the lives saved by traffic calming. An analysis by an assistant fire chief in Austin, TX, found that traffic calming loses 37 lives to heart attacks caused by a delay in emergency service vehicles for every life saved due to fewer auto-pedestrian collisions."

TRAFFIC CALMING CONSUMES MORE GAS

Since we are experiencing a fuel shortage, We need to do some thinking about the effect of traffic calming on our fuel supply. There are over 600,000 vehicles in Wake County. It is estimated that 400,000 of those are in Raleigh. Of these 400,000, at least 100,000 will be affected by traffic calming. Each of these vehicles will probably use an extra .1 gallon of gas per day (1/10 gallon) due to traffic calming. This means that an extra 10,000 gallons (100,000 x 1/10) will be wasted each day, an extra 300,000 gallons will be wasted each month, and a whopping 3.6 million gallons of gas will be wasted each year in Raleigh due to driving slower. In light of the current shortage, we can not afford to waste that much gas. It could mean the difference between running out of gas or having an adequate supply. This does not consider the vehicles that come to Raleigh from the other cities in Wake county, the other counties in the state, and out of state vehicles. Thus, the 3.6 million gallons of gas wasted is a very conservative estimate.