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.

 

Comments Off on Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer – What the Public Wants

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? Social Scientist

Wednesday, November 6 by JerryFoster

Cranbury CarletonNew Jersey traffic engineers don?t see suburbs, destroy downtowns with arterials and have refused to adopt road designs for neighborhoods. How will we learn to love them?

We have to understand that traffic engineers love solving problems, just not social problems. They?ll design how to move cars through an intersection, but not how to preserve or create a downtown, increase property values or reduce pollution ? yet the intersection design can affect all these other goals, positively or negatively.

Although we?ve been building roads for millennia, we?re just realizing how motor vehicle traffic affects society. Using a computer analogy, traffic engineering is moving from the green screen to the graphical user interface ? people want a richer experience, including multiple ways to get where we?re going.

Traffic engineers must learn to see themselves as social scientists, concerned with how people in addition to motorists interact with the roadways ? residents, runners, dog-walkers, cyclists, etc.

People are puzzling ? we love our cars, but hate traffic ? how can engineers solve the dilemma? Find out in the next installment of Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? What the Public Wants.

2 Comments »

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer – Context Sensitive Solutions

Wednesday, October 30 by JerryFoster

Clarksville Pedestrians 2In our previous posts, we?ve seen that traffic engineers see urban where we see suburban or rural, and destroy downtowns by putting fast and wide arterials through them. As a result, conversations between residents and engineers are fraught with possible misunderstandings, making it very difficult to find the love.

Fortunately, this problem is well known, so the traffic engineering profession (Federal Highway Administration) developed Context Sensitive Solutions, to ?develop a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility.? ?In other words, it encourages engineers to see farms and neighborhoods where we already see them, and to build appropriate roads for those places.

NJDOT and PennDOT even published the Smart Transportation Guidebook in 2008, which provides flexible roadway designs, e.g. for a community collector through a suburban neighborhood, 100% compatible with existing design standards (the flexibility was already there, who knew).

Problem solved? Not quite ? NJDOT didn?t adopt the principles and practices in the Smart Transportation Guidebook. Why not, and how can we learn to love our traffic engineers if we can?t even agree on neighborhoods? Stay tuned for the next installment ? Social Scientist.

 

 

1 Comment »

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? Collect Local Arterials

Wednesday, October 23 by JerryFoster

NJ Turnpike Crash Stops Rt 1The 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.

Princeton Sharrow Nassau Witherspoon 2Let?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.

571 East speed 40 1Traffic 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.

1 Comment »

Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? Suburbs?

Wednesday, October 16 by JerryFoster

Windsor Rd speed limit 50Don?t we live in the suburbs? Wouldn?t it be nice if there were Complete Streets designs that could make suburban living even better – for motorists, cyclists, walkers, runners, children and seniors?

Consider the suburbs from the point of view of the traffic engineer. After all, the invention of the automobile made the suburbs available to so many people over the last half century, so traffic engineers are largely responsible for how we suburbanites live so much of our lives.

As it turns out, traffic engineers don?t see suburbs, sort of like Stephen Colbert doesn?t see race. The traffic engineering world is governed by urban or rural designs only, and what we think of as suburban is by definition urban.

What about our farms, like all along Windsor Road ? rural, right? Sorry, the region?s population, not just the adjacent properties?, determine that all our roads are urban, since we?re in an urban area as defined by the Census Bureau (generally, over 5000 people).

So the first step in learning to love your traffic engineer is to see West Windsor from their big picture point of view – urban.

Stay tuned for our next installment of Learning to Love Your Traffic Engineer ? Collect Local Arterials.

3 Comments »

Archives

Categories

Tag Cloud

bicycle bicycle commuting bicycle safety Bicycle Tourism bicycling Bike/Ped Path Bike Commuting bike lanes bike path bike racks bike ride bike safety biking Community Bike Ride Complete Streets crosswalk D&R Canal Downtown Princeton Junction East Coast Greenway Historic Bike Trail League of American Bicyclists Learn to BIke Livable Communities Main Street Mercer County mercer county bike commuting Mercer County Park multi-use trails National Bike Month NJDOT pedestrian pedestrian safety Plainsboro Princeton Princeton Junction train station Ride of Silence Route 571 safety sidewalks Smart Transportation speed limits traffic Trolley Line Trail walking West Windsor

Upcoming Events

Monthly meetings are held at 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of the month via Zoom. We will eventually resume meeting in the West Windsor Municipal Building. Email us at [email protected] if you would like the Zoom code.

Find us at the West Windsor Farmers Market (Vaughn Drive parking lot) from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every other Saturday from May through Halloween.

December 5 — Weekly walking group at Community Park

December 12 — Weekly walking group at Community Park

December 14 — monthly meeting

December 19 — Weekly walking group at Community Park

Become a Member/Donate

Pace Car Program

Ongoing – Register your bike with the WW Police Department for free

Volunteer Opportunities – Sign up to give back to the community

Now Accepting Applications for WWBPA Student Advisory Board

More Events »

Visit our Facebook Page

Follow us on Twitter

Google Group