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NY Waterway Near Bankruptcy
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Antiplanner – Can you please look at this article in the Washington Post and explain why planners so dislike cul-de-sacs? Even if greater connectivity between subdivisions is desired, why can’t that be done with some connected streets and cul-de-sacs off the connected streets?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032102248.html
Borealis: “why can’t that be done with some connected streets and cul-de-sacs off the connected streets?”
ws: That is how it’s done currently, some connectors and cul-de-sacs off the connectors.
Point being windy road that go nowhere and cul-de-sacs create limited connectivity. This increases costs to municipalites for emergency response and street maintenance. It also creates auto-dependent for no reason, rather than people choosing to drive or walk for their needs.
The same planners who hate cul de sacs because they “limit connectivity” advocate traffic-calming barriers in gridded urban neighborhoods. Both are irrational.
ROT:“The same planners who hate cul de sacs because they “limit connectivity†advocate traffic-calming barriers in gridded urban neighborhoods. Both are irrational.”
ws: So it’s OK for people who live in a traditional neighborhood with connected streets to pay for the city services accrued by poorly designed neighborhoods (snow plowing in very low dense neighborhoods and extra fire stations needed to service “disconnected” neighborhoods)? Somebody is paying for this. Clearly they’re not being paid by user fees.
ROT: The same planners who hate cul de sacs because they “limit connectivity†advocate traffic-calming barriers in gridded urban neighborhoods. Both are irrational.
THWM: WTF?
A few other things I don’t understand from the article:
– How do cul-de-sacs cause more wear and tear on the roads?
– Do planners want more traffic in residential areas, or do they want to route non-local traffic to the arterial streets?
– I can understand how cul-de-sacs make police patrolling less efficient, as they have to drive down the cul-de-sac, turn around, and drive out again. But I think the result is that police rarely patrol down cul-de-sacs, and yet according to the article, cul-de-sacs have less crime.
– If, according to the article, cul-de-sacs have less crime and are safer streets, why is that automatically disregarded in favor of some other civic goal.
For what its worth, I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a suburb. The neighborhood kids played baseball, touch football, and other games in the street knowing that car traffic would be going rare and not travelling at unsafe speeds. Also the families in a cul-de-sac are much more closely connected. I thought that urban planners were advocating for one-way streets, local traffic restrictions, and blocking off streets to create such conditions. So I am just puzzled as to why cul-de-sacs are derided.
Cul-de-sac’s are a form of traffic calming too, though there are cul-de-sac’s that end with pedestrian passage ways to other cul-de-sac’s, now if they happen to be wide enough for a fire truck to fit through then there isn’t really a problem.
Borealis:“For what its worth, I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a suburb. The neighborhood kids played baseball, touch football, and other games in the street knowing that car traffic would be going rare and not travelling at unsafe speeds. Also the families in a cul-de-sac are much more closely connected. I thought that urban planners were advocating for one-way streets, local traffic restrictions, and blocking off streets to create such conditions. So I am just puzzled as to why cul-de-sacs are derided.”
ws:
1) Cul-de-sacs overburden arterial roads. More traffic on arterials = more money needed to be spent for maintenance and upgrades.
2) Nobody wants more traffic in their area. The point being when an area relies on one or two arterials for all traffic, the only way to alleviate such traffic is to allow for local traffic to go on local streets. To reduce people speeding and only taking local streets (to avoid other roads), streets will be narrower.
3) The article never talked about crime if I’m mistaken. It’s about perception of safety. According to some studies, more children are injured in cul-de-sac communities than others (due to people backing their cars out from their driveways).
4) One again, this isn’t so much about police (crime), but more about ambulance and fire response times. The whole point of the cul-de-sac community is for “safety”, but there is no evidence for them being safer, in fact many studies show they are less safe.
5) Cul-de-sacs certainly offer a great social aspect and play area for kids. One point to make, not every kid gets a house in a cul-de-sac. In my old neighborhood and cul-de-sac where I grew up, it would be abnormal for any kid outside of the homes adjacent to the cul-de-sac to come play in on our “turf”. Likewise, we would never play in another cul-de-sac. This was wrong, even though the cul-de-sacs are public. While it may offer space for the lucky few, what about the many children on homes facing the street not within a cul-de-sac?
In the absence of cul-de-sacs, the extra space gained by not have a sea of asphalt, a community park could be built. Many new urbanist communities have ample parks and open space designed around the homes so kids are not far away from their parent’s watchful eye and everyone (including adults) in the neighhood gets access to open space.
Would most parents, in the absence of cul-de-sacs, trade that space for quality parks? I’d think so. Of course, those parks would be “planned” around new development, and we couldn’t have any of that on this site, could we?
A cul-de-sac in the front yard, is better than a park 3 blocks away.
Thanks for the explanations. I guess some of my problem is how I envision the city. Northern Virginia has a terrible system of arterial roads. Western cities are generally built in grids and have major arterial roads every mile, which tend to be about right to keep distance travel out of local streets.
I can see how the safety and crime benefits of cul-de-sacs might be an illusion.
I guess I can see problems with emergency response times if subdivisions aren’t connected, but a few connections between subdivisions would seem to solve that, not a total ban on cul-de-sacs. Aren’t loop streets just as bad for connectivity as cul-de-sacs?
I can’t see how cul-de-sacs prevent parks and open space. I would think cul-de-sacs, and open space, would add to a variety of micro-neighborhoods that families could chose from. Some people don’t want cul-de-sacs — I know one older couple didn’t like us kids playing in the cul-de-sac and occaisionally hitting a ball into their yard.
What are the extra costs of road maintenance?
As for ambulance and fire response, is there anything out there showing it’s a problem? I have family in that business and they’ve never complained.
prk166:“As for ambulance and fire response, is there anything out there showing it’s a problem? I have family in that business and they’ve never complained.”
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/fires/fire_departments_struggle_as_towns_grow/
Property damage and deaths are related to a timely response.
Antiplanner wrote:
“The same planners who hate cul de sacs because they “limit connectivity†advocate traffic-calming barriers in gridded urban neighborhoods. Both are irrational.”
Cul-de-sacs limit connectivity. What this means is that all of the traffic must use the arterial roads, not just most of it as in a traditional grid. The arterial roads are thus very busy, and can lock up altogether. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was bicycle and pedestrian connectivity through the edges of the cul-de-sac. Cul-de-sacs also prevent the effective provision of transit. These concerns are hardly irrational.
Traffic calming varies in effectiveness, but it’s not irrational either. People shouldn’t be threatened by someone else’s use of the public roads.
Speed bumps are seen in the UK to be ineffective, because it encourages car drivers to buy big SUVs with soft suspension rather than smaller, more fuel efficient cars, with harder suspension. Speed cushions also tend to disintegrate.
Build-outs which give one direction priority over the other work better in theory than in practice. In theory, one direction is significantly slowed down – often the direction of priority alternates along the road. In practice cars *speed up* in order to get past the obstacle before the other car comes along, pedestrians and cyclists be damned.
Better strategies are as follows: narrow the street, reduce sight lines, plant trees, change the material of the road surface to indicate a special area, set low speed limits. Remove footways/sidewalks, so that cars and pedestrians share the space together – beyond a certain level of traffic, pedestrians and car start to segregate. Small roundabouts are a good way of slowing traffic down, providing that there is enough turning traffic to prevent abuse, and providing that they are properly designed (some aren’t). Instead of speed cameras, indicator signs which flash the speed limit at speeding cars achieve the same result without beating up on car drivers. And ultimately all road users need to take responsibility for their behaviour – until this happens road users will take risks with their safety, that of their family, and of their fellow citizens.
Even with a cul de sac, it also depends on how deep it goes too.
http://www.cyburbia.org/gallery/data/508/medium/culdesac_design_5.jpg
I think that’s a good point, highwayman. A cul-de-sac that is not deep (such as the one you showed), is vastly different from one with a long dead end street w/ a cul-de-sac.
Hopefully Virginia did not ban something that is not a negative (such as a short cul-de-sac).