vision2020@moscow.com: news on Friday...
news on Friday...
Bill London (london@wsunix.wsu.edu)
Sat, 31 May 1997 18:44:40 -0700 (PDT)
The Daily News on Friday, May 30, was especially interesting....
Beginning with the editorial--
Trahant et al, in the editorial, instead of looking at this list
as competition, see our discussion as a healthy conversation that can and
does spill over onto their pages and into their lives. What a welcome and
open-hearted perspective (do I have to say again how different this
newspaper is today, thanks to the change in editorship??).
That viewpoint (that 2020 is contributing to community dialog and
community-building) is one that I share. I am very pleased that we can
very easily turn our 2020 postings into newspaper letters to the editor. I
am glad that reporters, editorial writers, and editors read our postings
for story tips, ideas, trends, and community concerns. And I am pleased
that the city hierarchy responded quickly to our requests for their
involvement in the "Safe Sidewalks and Crosswalks" forum.
The rest of the editorial dealt with the issue of traffic calming
(placing traffic-slowing devices in residential streets to foster street
safety and community). That is an issue that I care about, and one that
has become something of a bizarre hobby of mine, since we first discussed
it at the annual Polk Street Block Party in 1995.
Yes, traffic calming has resulted (regularly, as in virtually
everywhere it has been done) in happier residents, slower traffic,
and safer streets. I would like to try it here in Moscow, and on Polk
Street first.....
Which brings me to the news story on page 8A of that same Friday
paper........
The story, entitled "Polk Street Residents want traffic slowed,"
has spawned a pile of misconceptions. Several people have asked me to
clarify the situation, so I think the confusion is uniformly distributed.
First, this is not just my idea. Last fall, an LID (local
improvement district) petition got more than enough signatures from Polk
STreet to begin the process of having the city build the traffic calming
stuff with the understanding of the residents that we would pay for it.
The public works committee last month agreed that the Polk Street project
would be a demonstration project for the city. The Thursday meeting (that
was the subject of the news article) was called to get ideas from the Polk
Street residents about what they were willing to pay for.
Second, City Engineer Gary Presol did state that he felt the
criteria for allowing traffic calming that were set in Portland were fine
and should be duplicated in Moscow. However, at the earlier public works
committee meeting, the committee rejected his advice, noting that indeed
Portland was not Moscow, that Moscow residents might have different
standards that big city folks, and that anyway (according to the street
data the city collected) the number of cars and the speed of the cars on
Polk Street was within 10 percent of the Portland standards anyway. The
committee voted to allow the Polk STreet project to continue while they
(the city) tried to figure out what the minimum criteria for allowing
traffic calming on Moscow's residential streets would be.
Third, the meeting on Thursday was not an adversarial one. Chair
Linda Pall did vow to bury herself below the first "speed bump" on
Moscow's streets because she thinks the speed bumps (like are found in
front of the Waremart store at the mall) are ugly and disgusting.
Virtually everyone agreed with her assessment of speed bumps. The traffic
calming devices that we discussed for placement on Polk Street were speed
humps (like speed bumps, except wide and gently sloping--used very
commonly in Boise), and curb extensions (placing landscaped islands or
peninsulas of curbed public area in the street or by the curb). The
meeting was cordial and friendly. We answered questions and considered
options. We're not done and will meet at least once more before deciding
on a design for our street.
And then if the weather cooperates, we will have the traffic
calming stuff in place this summer or fall......
And then it will be your turn, to request traffic calming on your
street.....
BL
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