For those of you who like to have all the details about traffic calming you can take a look at Wikipedia’s article on traffic calming here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming. We’ll just do a quick overview here. Basically, it is the use of various measures to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists with the aim of encouraging safer, more responsible, and quieter driving while reducing traffic congestion. The measures include engineering, education and enforcement.
The whole concept of traffic calming (TC) seems to have started in the 30’s in the UK and much of the research and implementation of TC ideas still seem to be centered in Europe for obvious reasons. Older towns with narrow and many times curvy streets designed in times of horse and buggy, and high density cities that sprung out of formerly lightly populated areas among others. Hmm, that sounds a lot like Carmel doesn’t it?
The benefits of TC are numerous and include some unexpected ones (like residents in areas with lighter traffic having, on average, three more friends and twice as many acquaintances as heavy traffic areas).
The typical traffic calming goal is to slow down cars by narrowing roads, using different types of speed bumps, and curving roads. This type of solution is, however, expensive and controversial in a city like Carmel. Related to this are putting in additional stop signs, dead ends, blocking traffic in certain areas to make pedestrian zones and redirecting traffic by preventing turns. The recent addition of several stop signs in Carmel are examples of this. The addition of some pedestrian signs at a couple crosswalks (on Ocean approaching Highway 1 and on Rio Road near the Mission for instance) are other welcome TC approaches.
As far as enforcement goes, we obtained a spreadsheet of every ticket that was written in Carmel-by-the-Sea over the past year. We will analyze this is a future blog post. But, it became clear to us that writing tickets isn’t a profitable or desired activity in our town. The city only receives $35 when they write a $235 ticket (running a stop sign or first level speeding). We’ll show you where the rest goes in a future article as well but most goes to the state, county and special interests. A significant number of tickets are protested which means our officers have to go to traffic court in Marina…a big drain on their time. But, we don’t have a big police force to start with and they can be spread pretty thin. The result? People in this town don’t have much fear of getting a ticket.
One thing that was clear. When residents complain consistently about a problem, like at Carpenter and 4th or Junipero and 12th, an officer is dispatched to those areas for a couple days and multiple tickets are written. But, for the following period of time (months), there are no tickets in those same areas until the next focused effort. In the meantime, you can witness car after car running those stop signs, some without even bothering to slow down. We all have our stories about seeing that type of activity in our community.
Next post we’ll be talking about Speed Limits and Traffic Studies.
