Remember no one is asking for an end to traffic calming, just TC reform. You be the judge.

From Tallahassee Democrat Online opinion by Editorial writer Mary Ann Lindley

Nice try, but traffic calming is a calamity

It was about 6 in the afternoon when I turned left off Magnolia onto Lucy Street, homeward bound. It had been maniacal in the traffic, so I slowed down and relaxed for the last five blocks to our house on East Georgia. Suddenly, though, a blinding ray of sun hit my eyes, throwing me for a loop, and then, from out of nowhere, a curb reared up directly in the lane I was traveling. I swerved to avoid hitting it only to spot another curb jutting out at me on my left. Then another on the right, and one more on the left.

Traffic calming? Hah!

When I was young and restless, I drove my then-husband's prized Austin Healey 3000 in a local autocross, zipping around pylons on a course in the vast parking lot of Tallahassee Mall. I felt like that again, only now I was driving 25 mph -- and not aspiring to be a local racing hero such as J.K. Jackson was in the '70s.

I had simply arrived in the land of experimental traffic distortion brought to us by our city government, and I was furious. No one else was traveling on Lucy Street, and yet I could easily have had a dandy little accident. Blinding sun and this unexpected obstacle course made Lucy Street unsafe at any speed.

'They punish the street for its speeders'
The city proves only the law of unintended consequences when it deforms our streets with these curbed medians. They're called chicanes, but by any other name they're accidents waiting to happen.

Neighbors on Hillcrest -- which links Tennessee and Miccosukee -- came to their senses and told the city to back off on its plans to distort their pretty old street this way, too. It had been alarming to see crews tattooing the pavement, siting more artificial curbs, so I was thrilled to read the neighbors' comments.

Chicanes are ugly. They make driveways hard to get into. They take up on-street parking. They exacerbate road rage. Longtime resident Marilyn Dean summed it up: "They punish the street for its speeders."

For the past two years, the city has committed about $150,000 a year to building traffic calmers. Some are OK, such as those wide humps that work like potholes in reverse.

Potholes, formed at no cost to the city, do discourage speed. So if you have them on your streets, and are afflicted with cut-through speeders, don't call for repairs.

But other efforts are intolerable. Pity the poor wretches who come upon Monroe Street downtown, expecting a normal configuration of streets and stoplights. What they find instead are lanes swerving unnaturally to accommodate curbed bump-outs and those incompetently installed brick crosswalks that dip and rise.

Slowing traffic and making downtown pedestrian-friendly with these devices is a great idea in concept. In practice, the unintended consequence prevails: Motorists want to get out of jaw-jarring downtown as fast as they can.

What? Just six traffic cops for the whole city?
I'm out in traffic a lot. Heck, I consider the Traffic Doctor one of my very best friends (and I know he takes a more positive view of things). But it strikes me that Tallahassee has more than its share of aggressive drivers, possibly caused by the frustration of endless construction on roads that thousands weep to have to use each day.

It would be nice if we were all more thoughtful and forgiving. And I long for a universal signal equivalent to that wave of thanks you get when you let somebody pull into traffic ahead of you. We need one that says, "Whoops. What a dolt I am!" Maybe your palm quickly slapped to your forehead to let surrounding drivers know that you meant to turn o n your blinkers, but you sneezed -- or that you were gossiping on your cell phone and didn't notice the light had turned green.

Meanwhile, I'm for spending the money now used to disfigure streets with traffic calmers to hire more traffic officers. Astonishingly, the city now has just six on this patrol.

We could triple the number, and with the tickets they'd write on a Friday afternoon they'd pay for themselves. Real offenders would get what they deserved, and the rest of us could go calmly on our way.