The Big Mouth of the South, One
This week's featured post from the Member Blogroll comes from CITYSMITHS, the blog of members Jennifer and Michael Smith in Rockford, IL. Enjoy!
Speed kills sense of place. City and town centers are destinations, not raceways, and commerce needs traffic—foot traffic. You cannot buy a dress from a car. Even foot traffic speeds up in the presence of fast moving vehicles. Access, not automobiles, should be the priority in city centers. -Project for Public Spaces
July 5th, 2015. Two vehicles, headed north on South Main street, are involved in a collision. The rear vehicle rolled over and crashed into a pole at the northeast corner of South Main and Loomis street. One motorist was pronounced dead at the scene.
This display has been left at the crash site for the last nine months. Flowers, crosses, LED lights, even an enclosed container for candles mark the place of the where the crash occurred. In all sincerity, it’s an impressive tribute. And, unfortunately, quite common.
You’ve seen displays like this in your city as well. From my experience, I tend to see them near the roadside, usually on high-speed roadways where the posted speed limit is 45mph or higher. Where did this particular crash occur?
Image courtesy of Google
Main Street and Loomis Street is just 1.2 miles away from State and Main, our City center. It’s an old, historic part of our city, and bears the marks of traditional urban development, even in its “Old and Blighted” state: A solid row of mixed-use buildings, on-street parking, walkable, and adjacent to dense neighborhoods. In other words: This is not a suburban area that was designed around the automobile.
And still: One motorist drove fast enough to roll a vehicle over on Main Street and lose his life. There are a lot of unknown variables here: Vehicle speed, condition of the cars, relationship between both of the drivers, and more. I’m not suggesting that a burden of responsibility should not fall on the drivers; the risk of injury increases as speed increases, and each driver chose to take that risk. I am suggesting, however, that the design speed of the street in general, and the lack of traditional traffic-calming measures in particular, actually causes motorists to drive well beyond the posted speed limit of 30mph, a speed limit that should not be causing rollover accidents.
No one–pedestrians, cyclists, motorists–should die on Main Street. No loved ones should ever have to leave a tribute like this, especially in an urban area. Again: The space between your foot and the gas pedal is up to the driver, and not the traffic engineer. I get that. But from a planning and design standpoint, shouldn’t local governments do everything in their power to minimize the risk of traffic-related crashes?
“No one–pedestrians, cyclists, motorists–should die on Main Street.”
The problem is that our Main Street is not really a main ‘Street’. Even more: It’s not really ours. ‘Route 2’ is the other name for our Main Street, which is owned and operated by IDOT.
I’ll take the next couple of posts to show you how our DOT does roads; I’m sure it won’t surprise you. In the meantime, take a look at South Main before IDOT begins construction on this stretch in Spring:
IDOT is only aiming to succeed at what we’ve tried to do for decades: Make each driver the King of Main Street, and all pedestrians his subjects. Success like this, however, comes at a cost.
From Andres Duany: "The Department of Transportation, and its single-minded pursuit of traffic flow, has destroyed more American towns than General Sherman.”
More to come.