“Traffic calming” is a traffic industry feel-good buzzword for reducing the speed of traffic. Installing speed bumps, medians or simply lowering the speed limit are other traffic-calming techniques. Speed bumps never seem to have a calming effect on me, however. Narrowing the lanes of traffic and inserting bike lanes along the complete Highway 550 corridor on north Main Avenue to go along with the RVs, trailers, semi-trucks and the trolley pulling over every few blocks seems to defy a basic level of common sense. Being told the traffic will calm down works to override our common sense.
Obviously calming down is always good – hard to argue with that. This multi-modal design experiment is currently a national trend and it is also is a great resume-builder for planners, engineers, manufacturers of green paint and the lovers of weed-infested median planters, but over the long-term the flaws in this design experiment will be exposed.
We do need to make it safer for pedestrians from 15th to 32nd streets. We do need to have a safer route for bicyclists and slow the traffic down from 32nd Street north to the light at Animas View Drive. Please calmly consider letting your city councilor know if you think we should use common sense by not just superimposing the generic multi-modal imprint on north Main by making the majority of Highway 550/north Main more congested and less safe with bike lanes and more narrow traffic lanes through the main part of town.
Ken Temple
Durango
