click on any icon for specific streetscape opportunities and solutions
calmer, quieter neighborhood streets
When cars boomed in popularity in the mid-20th century, road and street design standards tipped sharply toward efficient auto traffic flow and motorist safety. Even in residential areas, engineers prioritized motor vehicle traffic over other street uses. Covington is fortunate not to host all that many busy through-traffic arteries, but drivers accustomed to wide lanes and higher speeds often don’t adjust for pedestrian and cyclist safety when navigating our streets. The comment COVstreets hears more than any other is ‘people drive too fast down my street.’ Rolling stops, drivers headed headed against traffic down a one-way street, and GPS-induced shortcuts through residential streets not designed for through traffic — residents raise these issues often as well. Every couple of months, residents in some neighborhood bring a particular problem intersection or stretch of roadway to the attention of the mayor and commissioners, sometimes asking for more traffic enforcement.
But Covington police are already stretched thin with patrol duties and emergency calls, so streetscape engineering probably offers more effective, long-term responses. Traffic calming means speed bumps and speed cushions to most folks, but there’s a wide range of tested solutions in place throughout the region. Covington hasn’t adopted many of these strategies — there are only four speed bumps on public roads in the city and little of anything else along these lines — but we have the advantage of assessing the strategies deployed elsewhere. Residents are nearly unanimous in wanting slower, calmer traffic throughout the city, and well-designed measures can achieve that goal without much disrupting the convenience of smooth traffic flow.
opportunities
When you see someone rolling through a stop sign or driving too fast, your first response is probably to blame the driver and hope for some intervention — maybe a traffic stop and a ticket. Studies have shown, though, that engineering streets to encourage more cautious driving is even more effective at curbing unsafe driving. A narrower street slows most people down, as do chicanes — streetscape modifications like alternate-side parking that make drivers pay attention and weave carefully through a redesigned street. And of course there’s the full array of speed bumps and speed cushions. Instead of just accepting that some people are bad drivers, let’s catch up with nearby cities that have a made a commitment to slow traffic on streets that serve everybody, not just drivers.
And at a time when GPS routes drivers down whatever street an algorithm decides is fastest, regardless of whether a given block is designed for through traffic or not, engineering can likewise slow traffic (or exclude it altogether with creative one-way patterns) enough to remove a street from route suggestions and keep traffic where it belongs, on the arteries that move traffic more efficiently across the city.
solutions
Design standards applied by street type that suggest proven installations to curb excess speed and unsafe driving:
speed bumps on residential streets for maximum speed reduction
speed cushions on secondary arteries to slow private cars but not impeded emergency response vehicles
chicanes on residential streets and tertiary arteries to slow traffic
lane narrowing and elimination of unnecessary lanes
sidewalk-side trees, planters, and bollards that crowd traffic lanes and discourage unsafe driving speeds
Traffic calming strategies to re-route GPS short-cut traffic back to arteries:
research effective street modifications that would discourage algorithm-sourced routing of traffic onto residential streets