How to reduce rat running

charlotte_rose

The council are encouraging residents and organisations to give feedback through a series of local meetings.

They want to keep traffic on the main roads, off residential ones and encourage fewer car journeys.

Anyone had first hand experience of traffic calming solutions in their own local area?

Johno100

Scrapit wrote: »

This isn't a question for this or any internet forum. The council do the town planning, leave them to do their jobs.

That might have been OK a couple of decades ago when getting traffic to flow smoothly and efficiently was a priority for road planners and engineers. Now it seems slowing vehicles down to 'protect' the dozy Darwin award seeking 'vulnerable road users' seems to be the mantra.

AdrianC

Johno100 wrote: »

Never understood the term 'rat running'. Using all available routes to speed your journey and/or avoid congestion causing bottlenecks seems eminently sensible. Plus it reduces congestion at those congestion hotspots that are circumvented.

Five little letters...

N
I
M
B
Y

charlotte_rose

AdrianC wrote: »

What do you mean here?

Or do you mean actually closing some roads off, so that what are currently through routes physically cease to be?

closing some roads off with barriers and planters

AdrianC

charlotte_rose wrote: »

closing some roads off with barriers and planters

Residents complaining about the inconvenience in 3... 2... 1...

facade

"All" they need do is make it easier/quicker to stay on the main road than bypass it.


A nice long 20mph stretch with camera enforcement should do the trick (average cameras would be nice, then residents & visitors could do 80 or 90 as long as they don't drive past both cameras in one journey), stick 4 way lights in the middle etc...


Or they could improve flow on the main route as Johno100 is suggesting

Doozergirl

AdrianC wrote: »

Residents complaining about the inconvenience in 3... 2... 1...

When they sit in the newly increased traffic on the main roads to drive around the block to reach the house they used to be able to get to easily...

Residents have to assess their own priorities. Being able to access their homes easily means other people being able to access them too.

Absolutely agree that the job should be to improve flow on the main road. We live on a main road and we're closed overnight presently so that they can introduce right-hand-turn lanes to stop the people waiting from holding up traffic on the main drag. There's one idea.

Jackmydad

I don't think there's an answer. Eventually every road will be jammed nose to tail with people making "essential journeys" that they didn't need to make just a few years ago, and most roads will be impassable anyway because of lines of vehicles parked on either side.

Ah! The freedom of the open road!

Section106

charlotte_rose wrote: »

The council are encouraging residents and organisations to give feedback through a series of local meetings.

They want to keep traffic on the main roads, off residential ones and encourage fewer car journeys.

Anyone had first hand experience of traffic calming solutions in their own local area?

There are two completely different problems which are getting conflated here.

The first is people driving too quickly in residential areas. Councils usually address that with traffic 'calming' i.e. road humps, chicanes and the like. Far from 'calming' traffic, they result in more noise and pollution as drivers brake and accelerate to navigate through the obstructions.

The second issue is "excess" traffic - vehicles using a residential road in preference to a main road. Usually this is because the traffic engineers have well and truly botched up the main road in their misguided aim to "encourage fewer car journeys".

One theory says that providing traffic 'calming' on residential roads prevents this excess traffic (aka 'rat running') because drivers would prefer to sit in a traffic jam than navigate through residential roads blighted by traffic 'calming' obstructions. This is often found to be nonsense since a compelling factor in driver's route choices is to simply keep moving. Psychologically it feels better to be making progress rather than sitting in a traffic jam - even if the 'keep moving' journey actually takes longer than staying on the main route.

The only way to prevent this 'excess' traffic is to physically close the roads off to through traffic. One-way systems usually don't work, and become race tracks as drivers don't have to worry about oncoming traffic.

The solution in your area is either to improve the main road (as suggested by other posters) or to physically sever all the roads which link between the two main roads. As has already been said - the latter comes with the disbenefit of increasing emergency service response times and making life harder for residents. It will also increase congestion on the main road.

As an added bonus, creating turning areas at the end of newly created dead-end streets will also reduce the amount of car parking available. But since the residents hate cars using their streets we have to assume that none of them drive themselves, and therefore won't be the least bit concerned about the loss of parking.

motorguy

charlotte_rose wrote: »

The council are encouraging residents and organisations to give feedback through a series of local meetings.

They want to keep traffic on the main roads, off residential ones and encourage fewer car journeys.

Anyone had first hand experience of traffic calming solutions in their own local area?

Yes.

Theres a village near us where the residents forced the council to introduce traffic calming measures to slow traffic down as the children in the village played near the road.

So at great expense - £££,£££'s - the council put in a load of traffic calming measures including all the giving way to oncoming traffic islands, ramps, signs, etc.

Result? The kids now play football ON the road in between the traffic islands.

Maybe the cheaper option would have been for parents to maybe take some ownership and instill some road sense in to their kids? Something they clearly still havent done.