Traffic circles
April 30, 2008
Somehow, a WSJ article trumpeting the fact that “Madison has spent more than $1 million on speed humps, [and] traffic islands” seems designed more to generate controversy than to inform the public about road construction.
A more illuminating explanation — “over the last decade Madison, responding to requests from residents and neighborhoods, has added traffic circles to some roads, at an average annual cost of ‘over’ 43 cents per resident” — just doesn’t have the same punch. And of course, it’s expected that an article in this vein appeal to the resentment industry by pitting an elite bureaucracy of, er, civil engineers — against us ordinary folks (”But if traffic engineers have embraced TCDs, the public and other city departments are far less admiring.”)
It’s not until paragraph 19 that we find out that the program only exists because people do, in fact, like traffic circles on some streets:
“The way the program’s set up is it’s all grass roots,” Winter said, meaning that if residents don’t ask for traffic-calming devices, they don’t get them, even if the street they live on is arguably more dangerous than a street where the devices have been installed.”
It certainly sounds like an outrageous boondoggle foisted upon us by bitter and elitist city planners to me.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 am
This is one of those cases where I don’t care if it’s an elitist plan to Europificate us.
I love roundabouts. I hate stop signs and stop lights. Roundabouts are better for gas mileage, so doesn’t that make it patriotic and all that? You’d think the WSJ would eat that up.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 am
Well, it’s a grassroots, salt-of-the-earth plan to Europificate us, in any event.
I have heard complaints that bicyclists don’t like them — drivers end up tailgating them and being jerks, because there isn’t always enough space to pass a bicyclist between roundabouts. But I think it was Paul Soglin who mentioned that, and he’s kind of grumpy anyways, so who knows.
The WSJ seems driven more by a distaste of liberalism than anything else. Traffic circles are environmentally friendly. Therefore liberals like them. Therefore the WSJ will complain about how much they cost.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:49 am
Traffic circles could probably reduce if not end road rage.
And how can you complain about the cost of something you don’t have to send a repairman out to fix every time the wind blows hard?
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 am
The lower cost of upkeep is a benefit I hadn’t even considered. I’m agnostic on the road rage, though. The residential streets where the circles are being installed don’t seem especially conducive to road rage, since there’s already a presumption of not driving all that fast.
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:17 pm
‘Pitting an elite bureaucracy of, er, civil engineers’
If you follow City of Madison politics with regard to local neighborhoods very long at all, you learn that the the true élite of Madison, the true rulers of the City, are not the Common Council, nor even the Mayor– certainly not the Citizens!– but the traffic engineers indeed.
They are the priest-kings, the servants, of the great god Automobile. Their sole purpose is to insure that ever-larger numbers of motor vehicles may run ever less hindered courses, ever faster and faster, from one end of the City to the other, and back again. They are Wise and Good.