[Vision2020] re:speaking of bicycles

[Tom Ivie]

April,
The terms collector and arterial are not interchangeable.  In the first part of your argument you say that the City calls Third a collector, and it is quite effective in that capacity.  By the end of your argument you are saying that Third is an arterial.  It is not.  There are various conditions that dictate what is a collector and what is an arterial.  One is the Comprehensive Plan, of which it says Third is a collector and not appropriate to be used as an arterial.  The second has to do with the volume of traffic that flows on the street.  The portion of Third through Main and on West can be called an arterial because of the volume of traffic it has.  East of Main does not have the volume to support it being designated an arterial.  The only thing that would give that much volume would be punching Third through to Mt. View.  That would be a ridiculous amount of traffic going through an area that you have said is a 30 foot wide street and past two schools that have children
 crossing to go to and from them (as well as the park).  The designation of the street dictates, through the Idaho Code, what the speed limit will be.  If Third is designated as an arterial the effective speed limit, dictated by Idaho Code, will increase to 35mph.  Is that what we want for Third Street East of Main?  I and many others cannot imagine 35mph going past two schools and East City Park.  That is just crazy!!!
 
By the way, I went home and my house was still on Third Street.  I did look up the term "residential" in Websters and it says the term means "of or connected with residence...characterized by, or suitable for residences or homes [residential neighborhood]." Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition. 1972. (which by the way was before my house was built).  -Tom

April Fingerlos <aprilf at fingerlos.net> wrote:
When my husband and I attended the meetings on Windfall Hills plat proposals (our house butts up against two of the upcoming lots in that development), three types of streets were defined by the city---arterial, collector, and residential. Third was defined in Joel's presentation as a collector, and the developer of Windfall Hills concurred, defending his use of two roundabouts and 6' center medians to calm traffic and convert it into a residential. We sat in disbelief, hearing that a collector would be downgraded to a residential street and not treated as the arterial it city growth had made it become. The primary difference between the three was described by speed limits and traffic concentration. IIRC, and I probably don't, residentials were defined by 20 mph speed limits with frequent stop signs, collectors as 25-30 mph with occasional stop signs, and arterials as 35 mph with limited stop signs.

I am in total agreement with you--I do not think street-side parking has anything to do whatsoever with traffic calming--just the opposite, in fact. I'm still perplexed that the developer tried to go the route he did, knowing full well (though his own statement at a hearing) that Third is going to be extended well beyond him to the east according to the current Comprehensive Plan, eventually to Mill Road and/or the new ring road (as proposed by the county). His lots are so tiny, with shared driveways the only off-street parking option, that he had to widen Third significantly to allow for street-side parking. Does this added width accomplish traffic calming? Nope, I don't believe so.

I also agree with you in that there's lack of planning going on, but I doubt when Third was origonally constructed, they thought ahead to 2005 and beyond. The council then probably couldn't fathom the amount of growth the east side of the city is about to experience. So they didn't make Third an arterial then, obviously and probably correctly for the time (I don't know when Third was built--I'd safely guess WELL before I became a resident in 1991), but it's become one now in the natural growth of the city.



April

April Fingerlos
Moscow, ID



		
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