How designing safer roads led to some very dangerous roads in Phoenix, Arizona


I love Phoenix, but you gotta admit that the roads are very often deadly. I haven't checked recently, but Phoenix had always lead the country in red-light running. And it's really true - I see cars whizz through red lights all of the time.

But it was definitely along the road (literally) to good intentions that all of this happened. Phoenix has some of the widest, most clearly-marked, most visible streets of any city. I've lived there long enough to know that they're well-kept up, and of course they're flat and mostly without any blind curves. The visibility is so good that you can easily see the traffic lights a mile ahead of you, if not farther (depending on how sharp your eyes are).

What all of this safe engineering had led to is some very high-speed travel. Although most of the main streets of Phoenix are nominally 40 miles per hour as the speed limit, they're mostly traveled well beyond that. In fact, if you go 40 miles per hour you'll probably annoy most people who want to pass! And those speeds are fine on highways, but in places where traffic stops and starts it's deadly.

I'm not blaming anyone here. I certainly don't blame someone who is driving a heavy vehicle that takes a long time to slow down. And Phoenix has always had a lot of big vehicles, and even more now. These vehicles were never meant to "stop on a dime", they simply can't. It just has to do with momentum. And most people were taught that when they saw a yellow light to "gun it", rather than slow down, which means that often vehicles are hitting intersections at very high speeds.

One solution that I see, sadly enough, is something called "traffic calming", which simply means putting obstacles in the way in an attempt to slow traffic. And while it seems like a good idea, it's like putting a roller skate on the stairs for people who are trying to travel quickly around Phoenix. It's an annoyance, and doesn't seem to be much more than that. After the traffic calming, most traffic speeds up even faster to make up for lost time.

If all of this hasn't convinced you to avoid the mean streets of Phoenix, let me tell you about "suicide lanes". Believe it or not, there are center lanes that allow traffic to travel in either direction. They were invented to allow cars to turn without backing up traffic, but they have earned their name by how they're used. On any given day you'll see people driving towards each other, usually looking back over their shoulder, trying to merge with the high speed traffic. Not easy to do!

Clear visibility, wide and well-kept up streets don't seem to be a recipe for disaster, but it's turned out that way.  Be careful out there!

Image at the top of this post: A traffic light in Phoenix, Arizona. When it turns green, don't be the first person to go.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You are making this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more