Thursday, August 13, 2009

Street corner hoo-rah

Coronado Street takes a lazy "S" route from the top of the hill heading toward Park Avenue. It's loved by skateboarders, bicycles and bikers who build up great speed; autos make a fast trip down the pike. That's why I thought that the recently installed traffic flags I saw out of the corner of my eye up the hill might have something to do with this neighborhood speedway.

Yeah, I thought, the skate boarders, the racing bikes, the impatient motorists all ought to calm down. Might make things a tad safer for us pedestrians. So I looked for a speed bump or two.

What did I see? Those strips just count the number of cars -- and maybe time their speed. What sort of calming effect will that have?

Finally, a few tens of feet further up the hill, I saw the big blockade. Right where Glendale takes off from Coronado in a straight line down to Park Avenue. Sorry, make that took; continuing onto Glendale is now a no-no.

Lucked into a chat with a resident in the area, who was definitely in the anti-calming camp. He reported that most of the neighbors oppose change to the traffic routing. Says it was instigated by one Glendale Street household.

Above, the view looking down Coronado; below, a car turns into Coronado. BTW, even as we chatted, one vehicle violated that no-no sign, speeding right down Glendale. Per the neighbor, the "calming period" rerouting is posing a problem for the Mommy brigade that park their cars down by Lincoln School. They need to approach the school from the south, which the Glendale route makes easy and the Coronado route screws up entirely.

So there you have it. One group of citizens wants to stop speeding traffic down their street by rerouting it down another street where other neighbors live. It does make for a rather raucous and unsightly lot of street signs.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know that area; we were looking at houses for sale, and whew! What a "calming" mess, from your pics.

Yikes!

~Anon in AV.

Anonymous said...

I hope you have the good luck of getting Portland-style calming: speed bumps in neighborhoods. I love them.

Then they can start putting speed bumps in parking lots to keep people from running diagonals across them at 30 mph.

Oh dear, don't let me get started on this topic.

Avus said...

Happened in our street too, Granny. A long, wide road, it encouraged the speedsters. So they put in about 5 large "traffic humps". If you value your springs you negotiate them at about 15 mph - but the speedsters still take them at about 40mph and we now have the speed plus the "crash, thump" of the bouncing cars.

Granny J said...

anon av -- I have to admit that the idea of official "traffic calming" strikes me as a strange concept, tho the traffic careening down both streets could stand to slow down more than a little bit.

boonie -- a couple of speed bumps at the upper end of Glendale would work just fine to slow down some of the cowboying that goes on...

avus -- a local upscale facility for the aged has a drive that goes completely around it. It is chocka-block full of speed bumps; I can imagine what it was like before they were installed.

 
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