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Remember no one is asking for an end to traffic calming, just TC reform. You be the judge.
From the Portland Press Herald look in the archives.
by
Mark
Shanahan, Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 18, 1998
©Copyright
1998 Guy Gannett Communications
Federal officials no longer want to pay for Portland's ''traffic-calming'' measures on Stevens Avenue because air-quality tests show the speed bumps and raised crosswalks actually are increasing smog.
A representative of the Federal Highway Administration said Monday that $140,000 earmarked to complete the project will be withheld because initial work has increased some types of air pollution by almost 50 percent.
''We're not going to require that anything be removed,'' said Paul Lariviere, the agency's administrator in Maine. ''All this does is make any future work there ineligible for these funds.''
Last November, in an effort to slow traffic, make pedestrians safer and reduce air pollution on Stevens Avenue, the City Council approved the plan for speed bumps, raised crosswalks, reflective barrels and a new traffic light.
It was the council's second attempt to address concerns about Stevens Avenue. An earlier scheme that included zig-zagging asphalt curbs and islands was scrapped last summer after drivers, angered and bewildered by the changes, complained.
From the start, the traffic-calming project has been experimental. City officials pledged to remove the bumps and barrels if they did not achieve the goal of slowing traffic on Stevens Avenue, which is used daily by an estimated 16,000 motorists and nearly 2,500 students.
A study of the changes has since revealed both positive and negative results.
Cars have been slowed by as much as 15 mph and pedestrians are having an easier time crossing the busy north-south artery. On the other hand, accidents and air pollution are up.
The study was done by DeLuca-Hoffman Associates Inc., the company that designed the changes.
It's the increase in auto emissions - volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, in particular - that concerns the federal government. The $233,600 that it budgeted for the project comes from an account that must be used to reduce air pollution.
''The project has to show that the overall impact on air quality is a decrease in pollution,'' said Lariviere, of the Federal Highway Administration. ''That's not happening.''
Although the level of volatile organic compounds has increased by 46 percent along Stevens Avenue, Lariviere said his agency will not ask the city to undo what it has done. But it will not pay for any more work, at least not with the money it had earmarked for that purpose.
The city could have used the money to modify the traffic-calming plan or make the temporary measures permanent.
''They'd have to show us why we should spend more money on a project that we know increases emmissions,'' Lariviere said.
City officials did not seem surprised or upset Monday by the news that the federal government was withdrawing its funding for the traffic-calming project.
Charles W. Harlow, one of three city councilors whose district includes Stevens Avenue, said the city had no specific plans for the remaining money.
''We've agreed to keep (the changes) in a year or two more, and see what happens,'' Harlow said. ''When I look out there and wonder what we need to do, I don't know.''
But some critics of the project, such as Brian Peterson, say they know just what to do. They say the city should begin immediately to remove the calming devices.
Peterson, who lives on Prospect Street, said the federal government's decision to pull its funding proves the city should never have tried to manipulate the speed and flow of traffic on Stevens Avenue.
''I want to know when it's coming off the road,'' Peterson said. ''Now that we know that it pollutes the air and is dangerous - that it contradicts everything we're trying to accomplish - I want to know when it's coming off the road.''