Community Building Tip: Traffic
Aug. 24th, 2019 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithIn today's fragmented world, people can improve it by reaching out to each other. Here are some ideas for building community in your neighborhood.
Drive like your kids live here…because they do! I have become one of those people who yells, “slow down!” whenever a car speeds down our street, which means I’ve become my parents. But, I get it now that I have kids. We all like to live in vibrant, bustling neighborhoods, but this means people, especially kids, need to feel safe when walking or biking around.
This one is challenging if your neighborhood is designed more for cars than for people. However, there are things that can be done to encourage a safe environment:
* Spend time outdoors. The more eyes on the street, the less opportunity for mischief. Drivers are less likely to speed through a neighborhood full of people than one with empty yards.
* Some traffic-calming measures such as speed bumps can be installed over existing streets. You need the city's cooperation to do this, but if there have been traffic-pedestrian incidents, you have a strong case for needing them.
* Encourage people to use alternate means of travel such as walking, biking, skateboarding, rollerskating, etc. If folks have been discouraging some of these vehicles, cease doing that.
* If there are sidewalks, make sure they are in good repair and clear of obstacles. If there are no sidewalks, exhort the city to install them.
* There should be at least one place to sit and rest per block, and more is better. This ensures access for people who are pregnant, toddling, elderly, unwell, injured, mobility-impaired, etc. Anyone can put a bench on their private property. You may want to paint it with "Friendship Bench" or "Have a Seat" or some other indicator that bypassers may use it.
* Where are the public potties and water fountains? If there are none anywhere near your neighborhood, this makes human-powered travel difficult. An auxiliary water station may be improvised by stocking bottled water in stand similar to a Little Free Pantry, but then someone has to provide the water. Historically, neighborhoods often had a handful of people who would let anyone use their guest bathroom, but that's less likely to succeed today for a variety of reasons.
* How far do the walking/biking routes go in your neighborhood? Some people like to make a sitemap that shows route distances. Others paint colored stripes on the sidewalks or place colored waymarkers at intersections to show routes of different lengths. 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile, 2 miles, and 4 miles are good lengths. Walking for exercise or with an active dog, people typically cover 1 mile in about 15 minutes. That makes the longer routes 30 minutes (2 miles) and 60 minutes (4 miles) respectively. The shorter distances suit people with a slower pace or more limitations. Painting sidewalks typically requires city permission, but signs and markers can be placed on private property.
* Regrettably the best method is only available when a neighborhood is first built: rank the streets so that wide highways mark the boundaries of the neighborhood, within which streets narrow according to their use, with residential streets being narrowest to discourage speeding.
Drive like your kids live here…because they do! I have become one of those people who yells, “slow down!” whenever a car speeds down our street, which means I’ve become my parents. But, I get it now that I have kids. We all like to live in vibrant, bustling neighborhoods, but this means people, especially kids, need to feel safe when walking or biking around.
This one is challenging if your neighborhood is designed more for cars than for people. However, there are things that can be done to encourage a safe environment:
* Spend time outdoors. The more eyes on the street, the less opportunity for mischief. Drivers are less likely to speed through a neighborhood full of people than one with empty yards.
* Some traffic-calming measures such as speed bumps can be installed over existing streets. You need the city's cooperation to do this, but if there have been traffic-pedestrian incidents, you have a strong case for needing them.
* Encourage people to use alternate means of travel such as walking, biking, skateboarding, rollerskating, etc. If folks have been discouraging some of these vehicles, cease doing that.
* If there are sidewalks, make sure they are in good repair and clear of obstacles. If there are no sidewalks, exhort the city to install them.
* There should be at least one place to sit and rest per block, and more is better. This ensures access for people who are pregnant, toddling, elderly, unwell, injured, mobility-impaired, etc. Anyone can put a bench on their private property. You may want to paint it with "Friendship Bench" or "Have a Seat" or some other indicator that bypassers may use it.
* Where are the public potties and water fountains? If there are none anywhere near your neighborhood, this makes human-powered travel difficult. An auxiliary water station may be improvised by stocking bottled water in stand similar to a Little Free Pantry, but then someone has to provide the water. Historically, neighborhoods often had a handful of people who would let anyone use their guest bathroom, but that's less likely to succeed today for a variety of reasons.
* How far do the walking/biking routes go in your neighborhood? Some people like to make a sitemap that shows route distances. Others paint colored stripes on the sidewalks or place colored waymarkers at intersections to show routes of different lengths. 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile, 2 miles, and 4 miles are good lengths. Walking for exercise or with an active dog, people typically cover 1 mile in about 15 minutes. That makes the longer routes 30 minutes (2 miles) and 60 minutes (4 miles) respectively. The shorter distances suit people with a slower pace or more limitations. Painting sidewalks typically requires city permission, but signs and markers can be placed on private property.
* Regrettably the best method is only available when a neighborhood is first built: rank the streets so that wide highways mark the boundaries of the neighborhood, within which streets narrow according to their use, with residential streets being narrowest to discourage speeding.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 10:42 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2019-08-24 11:02 pm (UTC)Thank you!
>> As it happens, many residents in my street are arguing with our council to put a speed bump in the adjacent street. We live near a golf club and people fly up and down and we see it as an inevitability that someone or someone's pet gets hit. <<
Credible threat.
Some things to try in that specific situation...
* Talk to the golf club, not just the city. Point out that they could be liable if someone causes an accident. This is particularly true since residents have pointed out the possibility -- if someone gets hurt after that, it raises the culpability of those who could have solved the problem but chose not to. Perhaps the golf club could install its own traffic-calming features on land it owns. Golf clubs aren't poor, and they care about public image. Plus many of their members are older, and old people tend to be danger-sensitive. What it one of them gets hit? Ooo, that would be bad. Always appeal to other people's personal interest in getting them to do what you want.
* Look up similar cases on your own. Find statistics if you can. You want to be able to show a high risk of injury, and subsequent to that, how often citizens win a lawsuit and how much that costs the city. As a general trend, damages run high in cases where a danger could have been avoided but people refused to do it. The city may not give a fuck about your safety, but they definitely do not want to hemorrhage money if someone runs over a toddler.
* If necessary, address the issue with a civic lawyer. An expert may be able to suggest additional tactics that would help in your situation. Lawyers will often offer a free consultation (~15 minutes) to determine whether they can help you or some other method would suit you better.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2019-08-24 11:38 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2019-08-25 07:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-24 11:14 pm (UTC)I live in a curb free neighborhood and hope they don't add sidewalks. They'd just expect us to shovel out the hardpack of the street plows.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-25 12:35 am (UTC)and as someone above pointed out if you live in an area that gets snow, the homeowner/renter is liable for shoveling it.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-25 07:33 pm (UTC)I had nabers, thankfully, who did it for me, but the only thing the association did was shovel the driveway to the garage so the presumed vehicle could leave. I got lost twice trying to shovel my own steps, and never did it again after that.
-Trausio~
Well ...
Date: 2019-08-25 07:53 pm (UTC)The key points are:
* Who owns the sidewalk? If the city, it should be their responsibility altogether. If the private citizen, it's their responsibility, but the city has no right to tell them what to do with it. L-American towns often cheat, but if sued they can lose on these points.
* Is it possible and safe for someone to shovel the walk? For example, every year a bunch of people die of heart attacks from shoveling snow. All kinds of health warnings go out. But those are useless if the choice is shovel snow or get a fine you can't pay. This is then followed by lawsuits from surviving relatives, and they often win because the death was obviously preventable. This is why astute cities either make exceptions or cover the snow removal themselves. It's like biking, the higher percentage of retired or disabled people a city has, the more accommodations they tend to have for those.