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The people in charge of your city’s streets do not care if their road designs kill people, so long as traffic flows freely.

Grant Henninger@granthenninger.com

Two years ago, I was removed from the Anaheim Planning Commission because of a fight with the city’s traffic engineer. I wanted him to prioritize safety. He wanted to ensure cars could move quickly through our city. The city council of the largest city in the county backed his vision of our roads.

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I've started walking for exercise at night and although I already knew it was bad it has still given me additional appreciation for just how fucked the roads are for pedestrians in most American cities. Some have made me audible say "Are you fucking kidding me?"

They often don’t, but traffic engineers are not immune to public scrutiny. Director of Streets told a packed public meeting held bc a man was killed in a hit & run that a road diet, “would delay people’s commute” Resident responded, “I’m okay w/ a longer commute if my kid won’t die on our roads”

Streets director was fired within a year, due to consistent public criticism around the city’s disregard for pedestrian/bicyclist safety in road design and maitenance. Disclaimer, I live in a midwestern city with a population under 350,000 so it’s a lot easier to pressure elected officials

Wow, that is unfathomable to me. I've got multiple cities in the county that I work in where bike/ped injuries are clearly going up and no one (besides me!) would even consider that to be the fault of the Public Works director.

Administration was backed into a corner and needed a fall guy. However, initial meeting and advocacy efforts did ultimately lead to a ballot initiative replacing the streets department with a to-be-formed city department of transportation.

I've had this spoken to my face by engineers, it's 100% true. They know when they are designing something that's dangerous to people but they do it anyway to save usually 6 seconds of delay for drivers and post regulatory signs telling pedestrians not to do the thing they know they'll do anyway.

Perfect example. That white car is exiting the Garage and that's the only traffic on this street. Both it and the street in the foreground are one-way and the crosswalk on the left was removed and that barrier/reg sign added so that turning drivers don't have to wait for pedestrians to cross.

People do still cross here but if one of them gets hit by a turning driver, that regulatory sign allows the authorities to blame the pedestrian and ignore the unsafe design of the intersection. It also, according to a few engineers, covers their asses in their opinion. (11th & L in Sacramento)

Funnily enough, my town has decided to pursue what they call Vision Zero: that there should be no deaths from traffic. A better world is possible. But it requires electing leaders with the right priorities.

The problem with 97% of American cities' Vision Zero campaigns is that policymakers are not willing to push back against motorists who are angry about being slightly inconvenienced; so it becomes a useless symbolic exercise.

There has definitely been push back. It has so far not been effective, what with the occasional road death to sharpen the mind. We do have the advantage that much of the traffic is from people who don't live here, and so we're trying things. We'll see how effective they are.

I can’t drive. I walk, bike and take public transit. I have gone all over the place. But it’s so frustrating bc there are places in this country you just can’t access if you don’t have a car. And you get treated like shit when you try to.

This really blows my mind, but I've experienced it too. Things I've heard from moving vehicles in Texas: "Go back to China!" when I was riding a bike, and "Get a job!" and "Go back to Mexico!" when I was picking blackberries. Miserable assholes. 🤷‍♂️

People think it‘s ok that I can’t go certain places, as do planners. I have encountered “no pedestrian“ signs in suburban neighborhoods, trucks that “roll coal” at me while I ride my bike, and cops who think I’m a criminal bc I’m walking around a town built for cars.

The city's residents share that same view unfortunately. Where I live, when bollards are installed, the city displays a sign explaining "what changed here and why" because they have to sooth the rage of 90% of the residents.

Santa Monica hired a traffic engineer hoping to use a speed study to lower speed limits. A lot of speeds did get lowered but some got raised. Including on a PCH off-ramp that already has drivers going too fast & goes directly into one of the busiest pedestrian & cyclist intersections in the city. 🤦‍♂️

When I was a planning major in college we all had to take a traffic engineering class. planning was in the design college, the traffic class was in CE. It was an extremely hostile class because the professor was just "Its supply and demand only, if there are more cars you need to widen the road"

Deadly "Car Brain" nonsense dominates all meetings re: public rights-of-way in Orange County, CA. While there's incessant whining from the "Car Brainers" abt congession, the safety of residents, the quality of life in communities & the destructiveness of vehicles is never seriously mentioned.

Never forget the regional transit authority (OCTA in the OC) will withhold funding from cities within its region that fail to meet their predetermined LOS (level of service or vehicle capacity) for roadways in their jurisdiction. The entire system is an outdated death cult designed to worship cars!