Hannibal Lecter wrote:Get stuck behind a DART bus on Matilda from Ross Avenue to Mockingbird and see if you still think that.cowboyeagle05 wrote:Four lanes back up more traffic during rush hour than three lanes with a center turn lane would.
Try being stuck behind cars trying to turn on Throckmorton from one of the middle lanes on Cedar Springs Road during rush hour or while the bars are decently busy. It's called traffic if you don't want to be in it then get out of your car. We all get in frustrating traffic patterns but I would much prefer to trade a three-lane Cedar Springs Road with a center turn lane over the high speed dangerous 4 lane version we have now. I don't recommend bike lanes on Cedar Springs but would like to see better on-street parking arrangements and more corner bump-outs for pedestrian crossings.
The ones the city built are a victim of a few problems they narrow the intersection on Throckmorton but since cars are still racing down Cedar Springs and barreling around those corners there is a definite issue. Maybe if we had proceeded with the traffic slowing on Cedar Springs as well this incompatibility wouldn't be as much of an issue. They removed the bump-out this week on the Italia corner to give cars turning a bit more room to swing around those corners and now Hunky's has three on-street spots that are protected by a bump-out on Throckmorton to replace the taken away parking spots at the corner.
I understand why people don't want to trust the city I tend to swing conservative myself against government decision making but people have to realize their meddling is just as problematic here. The city proposed some real solutions and everyone said basically F*** you at all the proposals cause everyone is a traffic engineer including myself except apparently the people that work in the actual field and went to school for it...not to mention most business owners like those in any of these neighborhoods believe in myths about how they get consumer traffic. Most say give me a giant parking lot and a highspeed roadway and I'll make money.
I honestly would have liked to see a Better Block event here as the city did on Knox to demonstrate how traffic patterns could be modified and wouldn't bring the sky falling down as everyone seems to always proclaim. The problem is Oak Lawn is an active voice community who is always on the lookout for being the victim in any decision making for good reason. Oak Lawn also has an active voting block that politicians try to make happy on a constant basis so the people hired to create logical solutions are constantly undercut by emotional political interference. Instead, we get Frankenstein solutions that are children's band-aids rather than a cure.