Traffic Crazing
Or how gamified roads and driving conditions aren't making things safer.
If there’s one thing that I know St. Louisans love more than the Cardinals, pork steak and Busch beer, it’s roadway obstacles. It is a love affair that goes back many decades and, in my admittedly limited travelling experience, is unmatched in any other major American city. In fact, this love affair rather quickly fades, the further into St. Louis County one proceeds. If you go even further, in any direction, stop signs start being stop signs, again. It is a curious way of living that seems to mostly related to *checks notes* places with large Black populations. In gentrifying areas, road obstructions and random one-way streets often survive longer than the Black folks that once once constituted majorities in these areas. They get upgraded, though. Citywide, we’re moving past the Shoemehl pot era. These days, we do obstacles with class.
As you may have guessed, I’m not a fan of this stuff. Why? Because I think these things have, paradoxically, made us less safe. While it might seem counterintuitive, I believe that these traffic slowing measures (which is what they are), are making the city less safe for pedestrians. Additionally, I think the obsession with “traffic calming” provides a distraction that encourages the city to continually ignore the most basic and foundational piece of urban pedestrian safety infrastructure: sidewalks.
Are We Safer?
For the entirety of my time in St. Louis, we have been told that the solutions to our pedestrian and cyclist safety issues were ones that could be solved by modifying the built environment to change drivers’ behaviors. Essentially, the idea is that we can force driving habits on the population via successive traffic-flow-altering mechanisms. For instance, visiting most other cities will quickly reveal that there are way, way less four-way stops, pretty much everywhere. I would be absolutely amazed if St. Louis doesn’t have the nation’s most stop signs per square mile. The intensity also seems to be concentrated in city, decreasing from their. In many of the more western suburbs, the amount of stop signs seem in line with suburban areas in other cities I visit.
All that said, St. Louis doesn’t seem to have gotten safer for pedestrians or cyclists. I live directly off of South Broadway. In may almost two decades on the block, I’ve witnessed untold numbers of cyclists come down Broadway on weekend rides. That number, though, seems to have seen a significant decline. This is despite the vast increase in cyclists-friendly infrastructure in the city. Obviously, you’ve gotta ask “why?” Most of the people that I personally know who have decreased their usage of bikes for commuting, etc. have cited increasingly danger drivers as the cause. The reality is that our bike lanes are in the main roadway. I see people use them as a passing lane on Chouteau. So, if we’re gonna see increased utilization of the cycling infrastructure, which is good for health and the environment, we’ve really gotta deal with the dangerous driving issue. At least that’s what my conversations with folks who choose to ride for transportation have led me to believe. While other things get cited, dangerous drivers really is the most commonly given answer for why my friends ride less than they used to, even the younger ones.
We also seem to still have significant pedestrian deaths, this despite the fact that most city streets are actively hostile to fast driving. Between stop signs, speed humps, Shoemehl Pots, Slay Balls, Krewson Kubes, bump-outs and other various obstacles, our streets have become designed to not have traffic steadily flow. Once you leave the major thoroughfares, driving through our neighborhoods has become unpleasant. It’s also become gamified, which I think is why the alterations to the built environment aren’t working.
The Gamification of Our Streets
While the people who want us to believe that continued alterations to the built environment will create safer drivers (despite many, many years of this strategy failing) continue to push more and more “traffic calming” and repetitive studies, there is almost no reflection on how the devotion to strategies based on altering the built environment has changed the driving experience in many St. Louis neighborhoods and actual driving behaviors. Driving through neighborhoods around my house, you have to constantly be on notice for stop signs, speed humps, Shoemehl Pots and the new upscaled Shoemehl Pots that are sorta mini-roundabouts. Many other neighborhoods are the same. Now, this has made getting out of the neighborhood a slower affair for many. Not everybody, though.
Many people adapted their behaviors not in safer ways, but in more dangerous ways that allow them to still get through neighborhoods at a faster clip. For instance, I’m sure you’ve seen the folks that do the side of speed humps, so they don’t have to slow down as much. Obviously, the most famous #STL example is how nobody stops at stop signs. They are, on their best days, yield signs. Just think about it. You live on block X. In the past decade, additional obstacles, etc. have decreased the speed with which you can reach the main thoroughfares, where you can then drive faster. Generally 45MPH in a 35MPH, but more that in a second. There are is a good chunk of people who will build more time into their daily commute schedules, but most people don’t like commuting to work. Unfortunately, many don’t build in said time. Not everybody can live and work in the same neighborhood. Pretending otherwise is delusional. In many ways, the continued deployment of more and more in the way of “traffic calming” has built a system where these have created a complicated experience that seems to be failing to provide more safety.
So, for the rest of the population, they come up with strategies that allow them to complete their commutes in the time it traditionally took. There are two main strategies that folks seem to deploy for this purpose.
The previously mentioned ignoring of signage and driving methods that reduce the effectiveness of changes to the built environment.
Speeding faster, once they reach the thoroughfare.
That’s a big reason why the flow of traffic on major streets is around 10mph higher than posted limits. This 10mph difference is also pretty standard on highways, but it is a relatively smaller increase over the posted limit. When considering differences between highway speeding and speeding on city streets, there are numerous differences. For instance, people aren’t generally trying to cross the highway on foot, regularly throughout the day. You’re also not generally going to see many bicycles, though I understand there are some state highways that are part of bike routes. So, we have gamified our driving, and the end result seems to be that a significant chunk of the population have adapted via behaviors that decrease pedestrian and cyclist safety.
No Enforcement is Key to Puzzle
Another big part of this issue is that we have virtually no traffic enforcement in the city. I know the new chief says that this is changing, but I have not seen it. Whatever increase in traffic enforcement is happening, it’s not happening around me. My driving experience is that things have never been crazier. This is important.
In a system that is gamified, players are making risk/reward assessments and choosing the one that is most advantageous. The lack of traffic enforcement has essentially taken the risk off the table for the drivers. If you’re not gonna get pulled over, then speeding is the “right” decision. What is actually happening, though, is the risk is being offloaded from the driver and put on other drivers, pedestrians, etc. The hazard doesn’t actually disappear, it just gets reassigned. As such, we’ve really created a sorta perfect storm of factors that continue to make our streets dangerous, despite all of the traffic slowing obstacle that have been installed.
Just enforcement isn’t the answer, though. We know that enforcement will follow familiar racist and classist patterns. That’s also not safe, depending on who you are.
Cultural Change Needed
I have no “silver bullet” ideas for this problem. I don’t think there is a simple policy “wand” that could be waved at the problem and solve it. Really, I think we need to radically change how we approach traffic and safety. Constantly altering the built environment may keep contractors flush with cash, but does not appear be making us materially safer. Continuing to not enforcing traffic laws is also untenable, while returning to pre-#Ferguson law and order politics is also untenable.
The only thing I can think of is folks building some kind of consensus that is normalized via very public announcement and an enforcement strategy that is somehow balanced. I don’t know how you do that. We need to all agree to a new set of traffic ground rules, basically. It took us a long time to get here, and getting out won’t be super fast, either. Still, we won’t even begin that journey until after we admit what things aren’t working.
Back to Sidewalks
Finally, I can’t overstate how our city’s poor sidewalks are hazardous to residents. A big reason you see people in the streets is that the sidewalks are terrible. Many blocks can’t be navigated in a chair. I can personally attest to that, from when my knee was broken. If you need to get somewhere, and you’re in a chair, there is a good chance you will be forced to enter the roadway. People spend a lot of time talking about equity and accessibility, but this base-level issue continues to show that this is mostly talk. While we’re constantly chasing this or that new strategy or deploying the latest in traffic obstacle technology, we’re doing nothing to do the basic things necessary for pedestrian safety. That makes much of our conversation on these topic both distracting and dangerous. By constantly focusing on the latest and greatest fads in changing our built environment, we’re not focusing on the basics. If we can’t fix the sidewalks, then most of the other challenges we face are insurmountable.