Homeless in Vancouver: Traffic calming is frustrating drivers

by Stanley Q. Woodvine on November 5th, 2013 at 9:20 AM

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Increasingly I’m seeing trucks and SUVs trying to just go over traffic diverters like the one above. Here the driver of a large truck has made tracks over the diverter at the intersection of Alberta Street and West Broadway, as if it weren’t even there. One block west, on Columbia Street, there’s a newer diverter doing the same job, which I watched being given its finishing touches a few months ago. So far it has survived unscathed.

The City of Vancouver has been incorporating traffic-calming measures in its neighbourhood street improvements for at least 30 years. By “traffic calming”, I mean traffic circles (aka roundabouts) at neighbourhood intersections, speed bumps near schools, and traffic diverters of all shapes and sizes. The goal is to slow down and control the flow of traffic into and through neighbourhoods, using street architecture rather than just stop signs or traffic lights.

A vicious circle

Traffic circles, as I recall, first appeared in the West End in the 1980s. They have since spread to every neighbourhood. They’re simple—just a circular island in the centre of an intersection—governed by one main rule: keep to the right. They slow traffic, and they can all but eliminate head-on, and T-bone collisions. I think they’re life savers. Often the centre of the circle is planted with a small community garden, so they can be attractive to boot.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be working like they used to. Everywhere I encounter drivers at traffic circles who insist on turning left as if the circle wasn’t there, when they are supposed to turn right, counter-clockwise around the circle. In May of this year, the city actually removed a traffic circle in Kitsilano because it was seen to be causing collisions between cars and bicycles.

According to this Georgia Straight article, the circle at West 10th and Pine was replaced by two-way stop signs, after statistics showed it ranked in the top 10 intersections for car-bike crashes. (See a photo of it being removed below.)

Cyclists just add to the complexity of driving, particularly when some of us ride as though we’re above the rules of the road. Drivers who may feel they’re being unfairly blocked by traffic-calming measures from getting from A to B in a sensible straight line, at a sensible speed, may be that much more annoyed to see that every traffic diverter allows unrestricted two-way bicycle access. Nyah, nyah!

Too much of a good thing?

I’m seeing drivers exhibiting confusion and impatience with traffic circles, diverters, and four-way stops. I’ve watched a number of SUVs hit, and go up onto diverters, as if they didn’t see them, and I regularly see commercial trucks go right over them.

Traffic diverters are popping up all over the West Side neighbourhoods I frequent: Kitsilano, Fairview, and the western part of Mount Pleasant. The city can put one in place quite quickly, and, sometimes just as quickly, I’ve seen city workers rip out an existing diverter, and build a new one to a different design.

I don’t know how many diverters the city has built in the last two years, but it looks like a lot. And increasingly, it seems to me that more diverters just mean more opportunities for drivers to try and circumvent them, one way or the other.

I think this is firstly about having more motor vehicles on less road space. Increased congestion on major arterial roads encourages traffic to use the alleys and side streets of adjacent residential neighbourhoods.

This, in turn, leads the city to install layers of traffic-calming measures to stop motor vehicles from using neighbourhood streets as through roads. Keeping through traffic out of the neighbourhoods means keeping it on very congested main roads.

If traffic volumes continue to increase, as it surely will, I’ve no idea what the city will do. The main losers right now may be commercial service and delivery vehicles, as they have to share lanes with regular car traffic trying to escape the crush on major streets like West Broadway—an example being the alley on the south side of West Broadway, which offers an irresistible straight line, with no traffic lights, from Oak to Granville streets, as car drivers are figuring out.

Whether it’s talking on their cellphones, or driving parkour-style, whenever otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing en masse to become scoflaws, it suggests an underlying problem. I think people are increasingly balking at having their prerogatives as drivers taken away.

Drivers are certainly frustrated by a lot more than just bike lanes.

Comments

32 Comments

bloe me

Nov 5, 2013 at 9:35am

I have some sympathy for those who drive for a living, esp. delivery drivers, and then only minimal at best. The rest of you drivers really need to readjust this whole entitlement thing. Driving is NOT a g-d given right.

bloe u

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:13am

hey bloe, neither is running stop signs, riding on sideawlks and ignoring saftely laws. Get a grip and get the "entitled" cyclist out of YOUR head!!!

slim

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:17am

It would be nice to see some cops actually working traffic. I see police ignore red light runners, non signaling drivers and aggressive drivers all the time. A few months of ticketing these fools may smarten them up.

RUK

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:19am

As a cyclist, I like the traffic calming circles in theory, but in practice, I wonder if they are a bit hazardous in that the outer rim is often not clearly painted to distinguish it from the road surface.

A few leaves, a bit of dirt, some rain on a windshield and then BAM! What was that?!

In conclusion, a ring of high contrast colour around these things couldn't hurt and might help.

(In my neighbourhood, some artistes have painted the circle, then painted the road around it - the colours may well swirl into a confusing melange - I have wondered if people who were not used to driving on our road have ever hung themselves up on that circle.)

B

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:35am

"If traffic volumes continue to increase, as it surely will..."

There is no "surely". The era of the car is over. And I'm not making a statement of what I hope will happen, or what we're planning; I'm making a statement of fact.

Nobody seems to fully absorb it because car travel increased for so long. But the rate of increase started to slow in 1998, and in 2005 if finally reversed. Car travel started to drop, all over the western world. The car is in retreat, and the trend is strong and two decades old now.

http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img/upload/2012/03/01/VMT-chart-2.jpg

Traffic in the Massey tunnel and Port Mann has been *level or falling* for years, despite population increases:

http://canadianveggie.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/massey-tunnel-traffic-...

http://www.civicsurrey.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/portmannmodel2.png

And the trend is solid worldwide. Check out the age distribution - young people aren't even getting licenses anymore.

http://www.economist.com/node/21563280

We've listened to people going on in this "accommodating drivers is just reality!" concern-troll vein for years. But it's done. The war against the car is over - the smartphone dealt it the final blow. It's just a mop up operation now.

cathy

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:35am

I mostly ride a bike and have noticed drivers are becoming increasing aggressive and unsafe.

I have had mostly men actually "play chicken" with me on my bike if in their "minds" i have somehow slowed them down-mostly this is because i exist and am on the same road as them.
Honking and shouting is quite common now.

For some reason these men tend to be very overweight, red faced and are usually drinking coffee as they roar by in their huge SUV's/trucks. Rob Ford is probably their role model.

People seem to undergo a personality change behind the wheel and do not have any patience for anything or anyone they think is in the way. This now includes so called traffic calming set ups.
Also many don't give a dam if they injure someone while driving anymore.
They know they have a good chance beating any charges that might be laid.

Obviously a lot more than traffic calming needs to be done to deal with them.
Maybe deliberately driving over signs, markers, traffic calming circles needs to be dealt with by huge fines and suspensions of driving licenses?

And drivers-No you do not own the road.

Rick in Richmond

Nov 5, 2013 at 10:42am

Over the summer the City spent $28,000 to install a car-block device at a minor intersection along one the of many roadway / bikeway streets on the east side.

To date, one of its posts has been destroyed four times, at a repair cost of $350 each time. Why do drivers resent it so much?

This is an engineer's wet dream, imposing a solution for which there was no problem. It had never been a risky intersection for anyone.

To make it worse, the city could not be bothered to install NO RIGHT / NO LEFT turns signs as drivers enter the newly dead-ended block. Especially at night, they are often half-way down the block before they realize it has no exit. They have to do a U-Turn to get out.

Twice now, a bicycle has run into a car doing a U-Turn. These are accidents CAUSED by poor engineering, and poor signage.

Drivers will continue to destroy these posts -- because they are stupidly located. The City will continue to replace them, because they can't admit they were wrong in the first place.

Because of shoddy traffic engineering, cyclists are now at GREATER risk than they were before. Only in Vancouver does this constitute progress.

Alan Layton

Nov 5, 2013 at 12:03pm

As someone who has to go through many circles to get home, there's one thing that is a constant - cyclists rarely if ever stop at them. They are always blowing through them and every driver knows you have to keep an eye out for them. I think that most of them honestly believe that the circles were put in for cyclists.

B

Nov 5, 2013 at 12:37pm

Alan, the circles are like a yield sign, not a stop sign - slow down and yield to traffic already in the circle. Cyclists are already going at a modest speed. And they're often on cycling routes, which are the arterials for cyclists.