I live at the corner of 34th and Martin Drive. Last week I was talking to my neighbor, whose 2 year old daughter was wandering down the sidewalk toward my house. Suddenly two cars came screaming down Martin at what had to be in excess of 40 MPH, and I could see the terror in his eyes as he went sprinting toward his daughter.
Unfortunately, this is the norm on Martin Drive. While the city deploys vans to send people tickets in the mail, I don't think it's working. This isn't a problem that can be solved with enforcement. It's a design problem. My own daughter will be born in May, and I'm already starting to worry.
The streets in Martin Acres are designed for higher speeds than are safe for a residential neighborhood. The corners are rounded with a massive radius. The sidewalks are extremely narrow, and the streets are extremely wide with clear sight lines due to a lack of street trees. Every cue tells the drivers, "this is a place for cars; you're safe; drive fast." We can mail tickets to people all we want, but I don't think anything will change until we change those signals. We need to cue drivers that this is a neighborhood, a complex, unpredictable environment in which it's inherently unsafe to exceed the 25 MPH speed limit.
A true solution would be comprehensive reform. We would widen the sidewalks, starting with Martin Drive, which is a school route. I find it incredibly ironic that city ordinances require pathways to be clear of snow for the width of 5 feet, but our sidewalks are only 3'8" wide. Basically it's the city telling me that someone walking in a wealthier neighborhood has more of a right to walk side by side with their wife and a stroller 24 hours after a snowstorm than I have any day of the year. But I digress...
I realize getting funding to fix the design of Martin Acres might never happen or at least be extremely slow. But I would like to experiment with something temporary and localized that doesn't require public funding.
I want to gather vehicle speeds for a couple weeks in front of my house and run some statistics. What's the mean/median/and 95th percentile vehicle speed? Then I want to construct a temporary median at the intersection of 34th and Martin. Something to just create some complexity to the streetscape and cue drivers to slow down, maybe by stacking up some blocks and putting some flowers inside them. Then I want to collect a couple weeks of speeds again and see if more people are driving closer to the speed limit.
Anyway, I care about my neighborhood and want to make it better. I don't want to be cited by the city for doing so. I want to fix this environment before my kid is old enough to toddle in front of a car driving 40 MPH through my neighborhood.
Thanks for your time, Nathan