Tag Archives: roads

A small town responds with a monument after the highway bypassed them

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This is a common tale in American municipal development: the railroad or the road or the highway that once ran through the community has decided on a new path, now bypassing the community and leaving it without the traffic that once supported businesses in town. This recently happened to the small town of Hooper, Nebraska. Hooper residents came together to build a sign/monument along the new highway bypass (U.S. 275):

The foundation made the final pick: a tapered, 24-foot tower that would spell “Hooper” in 18-inch-high letters down two of its three sides. This way, the sign would rise above the fertile flatness.

Fund-raising letters went out in the fall of 2009. Quickly, the foundation surpassed its $18,000 goal, thanks to several thousand dollars from the old Commercial Club and to the many, many checks written out for amounts closer to $25…

Finally, right about harvest season, a brick-and-concrete base was built upon a concrete foundation. Then the three precast concrete sides were raised and secured to form the tapered tower, on top of which was placed a cap adorned with a large concrete ball.

Some finishing touches were still needed. The police chief, Matt Schott, used his excavator to dig a shallow trench for a retaining wall, after which a landscaping firm came in to plant some shrubs and make the ground look like an inviting garden, planted in a cornfield.

The project’s completion prompted no fanfare. The foundation’s members doubted that many people would gather beside a highway to celebrate a concrete tower. Besides, the sign was its own celebration.

Now, as the endless horizon along U.S. 275 surrenders to the wintry dusk, the beams of two spotlights sprout from the ground to illuminate the name of a place you might otherwise miss.

An interesting choice – not just a road sign saying Hooper is down the road if you take a turn but rather more of a monument. While it appears from this article that this was a meaningful exercise for Hooper residents, does it have any impact on the outside world? This project seems important for the community itself, an opportunity to come together, erect a symbol, and essentially suggest to the world that though the highway may not go through town, Hooper is here to stay.

This is not an isolated incident as many communities have tried to deal with this issue. A number of suburbs struggle with this: how do you get people to come into your downtown if all they want to do is drive along highways or major roads to get through your community as quickly as possible? One tactic is to try to erect markers or monuments at key intersections or along major roads that point people toward the downtown.

At the same time, how many communities today would actually want a major road, one with a 40 MPH speed limit, running right through the center of the community? For a small town, it might be the only source of traffic but for many suburbs, this would not be desirable.

h/t The Infrastructurist

An example of fun solutions to social problems: speed camera lottery

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There are lots of social problems where it is hard to motivate individuals to support efforts to battle the problems or to change their individual behavior. But what if individuals could have a chance to benefit from the measures beyond simply the abstract “you’re helping society”? Some thinkers developed a lottery that might improve people’s views of speed cameras and reduced the number of speeding people on the road:

“Can we get more people to obey the speed limit by making it fun to do?” That’s a question Volkswagen recently posed in a public contest — and the winning entry was the Speed Camera Lottery, conceived by Kevin Richardson of San Francisco. Richardson’s idea, quite simply, is to build a better speed trap. Strategically placed traffic cameras will photograph all passing cars. Drivers exceeding the speed limit are sent tickets, while those obeying it are pooled into a lottery funded by the fines. Every now and then a randomly selected winner is sent a check.

The speed-limit contest was part of the Fun Theory, a program designed by Swedish advertising firm DDB Stockholm to make “seemingly baleful social challenges — environmental protection, speed-limit adherence, boosting public transportation ridership — enjoyable,” according to the Wheels blog of the New York Times. Other transportation-related innovations included the Wiki Traffic Light, which tries to get people to stop on red by fixing a screen that displays interesting facts, and the Piano Stairs, which nudges subway riders off escalators and onto the stairs by converting the steps into piano keys — ala the “Heart and Soul” scene from “Big.”

A demo of the Speed Camera Lottery enacted in Stockholm seems to have been a success. In collaboration with the Swedish National Society for Road Safety, Volkswagen installed a speed camera that showed drivers their speed. Over a three-day period the camera snapped shots of 24,857 cars. The average speed before the test was 32 kilometers an hour. During the test that figure dropped to 25 k.p.h. — a 22 percent reduction in speed.

My first thought upon reading this was that it is a clever way to deal with the issue of speeding. But, this could get complicated quickly. Where exactly is the trade-off point where people need to see that enough drivers who obey the law are benefiting versus the number of people who are receiving tickets? Such cameras have been particularly detested in the United Kingdom and the United States – would a program like this be enough to overcome these attitudes? More broadly, should people be rewarded for following laws or guidelines?

In general, we need more creative thinking like this. People generally don’t like to be told what to do, particularly if they feel that they are being scolded or that the state is just out to get them (or raise revenue). But if people can be convinced that they could tangibly benefit from following the law or fighting a particular social problem, perhaps more people would jump on board.

Infrastructure improvements needed but the will is lacking

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The hidden backbone of any community is its infrastructure: the roads, sewers, electricity lines, and more that make the basics of life possible. But it appears that there might be a perception issue among Americans: even though there are a number of experts calling for infrastructure improvements (read The Infrastructurist for more information), Americans either don’t see it is a priority or don’t want to commit extra money to projects (I’ve moved around some of the text from the article):

Infrastructure spending in the U.S. stands at 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product – half what it was in 1960 — compared with approximately 9 percent in China and 5 percent for Europe, according to the government report.

“During recessions it is common for state and local governments to cut back on capital projects — such as building schools, roads and parks — in order to meet balanced budget requirements,” the report concluded. “However, the need for improved and expanded infrastructure is just as great during a downturn as it is during a boom.”

“My sense is things have changed,” said Andrew Goetz, a University of Denver professor and an expert on transportation policy. “People now tend to see any project as a waste of money, and that’s just wrong.”

“I call it the Bridge to Nowhere syndrome,” he added. “High-profile projects get publicized and they become a symbol for any infrastructure project that’s out there, and even the ones that are justified get tarnished by the same charge.”

So how can the negative perception of infrastructure be changed? I don’t think many people would argue that it is unnecessary (particularly if it affects their personal travel or services) but there are stories of cost overruns, delays, and projects that seem unnecessary. This should be thought of as a social problem – and the American public needs some convincing, particularly in lean economic times.

Calculating how much transportation, and driving, costs

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A new website, Abogo, offers an estimate of how much transportation costs you per month based on your address. While the estimates for driving a car may seem high, it is a reminder of how much it actually costs to maintain, insure, and drive a car. The website uses a methodology that suggests even the cheapest car, a sub-compact, costs $3,606 a year based on driving 14,000 miles (see page 7 of this pdf).

On top of the personal costs, driving has a lot of other costs including building and maintaining roads, pollution, sprawl, and time lost to congestion and traffic. Of course, it has benefits as well including freedom and privacy.

While most Americans have clearly chosen the car as the transportation of choice, we should not forget that it is a rather costly choice.

A new traffic control device: painting a picture of a child on the road

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The battle to control speeders has a new weapon:

On Tuesday, the town [West Vancouver, Canada] unveiled a new way to persuade motorists to ease off the gas pedal in the vicinity of the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School: a 2-D image of a child playing, creating the illusion that the approaching driver will soon blast into a child.

According to Discover magazine, the pavement painting appears to rise up as the driver gets closer to it, reaching full 3-D realism at around 100 feet: “Its designers created the image to give drivers who travel at the street’s recommended 18 miles per hour (30 km per hour) enough time to stop before hitting Pavement Patty — acknowledging the spectacle before they continue to safely roll over her.”

I would be very curious to know how effective this is. While the article suggests that drivers may then be more prone to hit real children, drivers might also just eventually tune out the painting, much as they do with traffic signs.

Another school of thought would suggest measures like this painting are missing the point. What really should change are the structure and design of streets. If you want people to drive more safely, make roads narrower and include parked cars on both sides. Or, one could go as far as European traffic engineer Hans Monderman who advocated removing all traffic signs – since drivers ignore them much of the time anyway, having no signs might force them to pay more attention.

Combining stop and yield signs

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A venture capitalist is seeking a new road sign: a combination of the stop and yield signs. His reasoning: there are times when no one else is at the intersection and a driver should not have to completely stop. These combination signs would save much time and money and would function best when a minor road intersects a major road. Read about it here (and also get a lesson in when stop and yield signs were developed in America).