🚀 go-pugleaf

Richard Porter (rap@bnr.co.uk) wrote:
: This got me thinking about some so-called "traffic calmiing" methods.  They
: have recently introduced a series of humps in the middle of a village I
: frequently pass through, so instead of pootling through at a steady 30 in
: top I find I am now continually accelerating and slowing down in second, which
: must make a lot more noise for the residents. Moreover, instead of looking
: out for children, stray animals, elderly pedestrians, etc. my concentration
: is partially diverted to looking for the next hump and adjusting my speed
: to the optimum for the suspension.  Is this really a contribution to road
: safety?

: Richard Porter

This is another of my pet hates!!  The most stupid system must be that 
introduced in the centre of Milton Keynes.  Here there are two parallel roads
just north and south of the shopping centre.  People cross these in preset
places where the under-cover walkways emerge from the shops.  The powers that
be decided to install speed ramps exactly at these points!  This has given rise to a variety of problems.....

1.	The ramps bring the road level to the same as the edge of the pavement
	so that lots of people believe they are pedestrian crossings.  This is
	made even worse because the unwary pedestrian sees the cars slowing
	to take the ramp and assumes that they are slowing to let him/her
	across.

2.	All of the bus stops are along one of the roads, so just as the bus is
	coming to a stop it lurches violently as people try to stand up from 
	their seats.

3.	A car with a weak front suspension will be fine on a flat straight
	road but is more vulnerable to failure when that suspension is placed
	under stress.  I fear that it is only a matter of time before such a
	car suffers a failure of its front suspension on one of these ramps and
	ploughs into the queue of people at the bus stops close to each ramp.

Anybody know of the justification for these things??  Anybody know who holds
the responsibility for planning road systems in general - i.e. who to lobby??

Ian.

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