West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer – What the Public Wants

Wednesday, November 13 by JerryFoster

It?s hard to learn to love our traffic engineers ? they don?t see the same world we do, and don?t want to talk about it. Why not? Have you been to a public meeting?

The public has issues – many residents have not learned to disengage knee-jerk thinking, do their homework or propose constructive suggestions. Some are hostile to any government action, including road projects.

We choose to live in West Windsor because of the promise of safety, good schools, open space and convenient train commuting. We love our cars, but don?t want traffic in our neighborhoods.

Charles Marohn, an engineer and planner, identifies the different values of residents and engineers. In order, residents prioritize safety, low cost, traffic volume and speed, while engineers prioritize speed, volume, safety and cost.

Value divergence shows in the effort to improve walking and biking along Cranbury Road. Despite WWBPA recommendations, residents? public comments and numerous yard signs asking motorists to Drive 25, traffic calming was rejected as a project goal.

We?re determined to learn to love our engineers, so in our next installment we?ll focus on the most divergent values ? speed and volume.

Tags: charles marohn, cost, cranbury road, learn to love your traffic engineer, speed, traffic calming, traffic engineer, traffic safety, value divergence, volume, what the public wants
Posted in Advocacy, Complete Streets, Cranbury Road |

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? Collect Local Arterials

Wednesday, October 23 by JerryFoster

The last installment showed that traffic engineers see West Windsor?s roads as urban, even when bordered by farms. To learn to love them, we need to speak their language, so let?s look at the roadway functional hierarchy. Arterials are major roads, Local roads are self descriptive, and Collector roads connect them.

So what? Each type has its own design, e.g. nobody would live on an interstate, the design precludes driveways.

Let?s look at our Principal Arterials – US 1, Princeton Hightstown Road (CR 571) in downtown West Windsor and Nassau Street (SR 27) in downtown Princeton. How can such different roads be considered the same? Traffic engineers don?t see places, but they do identify ?traffic generators?. Downtowns aren?t relevant, except that they generate enough traffic to warrant an arterial to connect them.

As traffic engineers ?improve? CR571 and SR27 to design standards like Route 1, they destroy the places they don?t recognize, favoring getting through over getting to a place. It?s up to residents to demand local arterials that preserve places for people.

Traffic engineers are an enigma ? they don?t see suburbs or downtowns, and destroy the places they don?t see. How will we learn to love them? Find out in the next installment ? Context Sensitive Solutions.

Tags: arterial, collect local arterials, collector, Complete Streets, context senstive design, functional hierarchy, learn to love your traffic engineer, local arterial, local roads, roadway hierarchy, traffic engineer
Posted in Advocacy |