The very notion of traffic calming--signage, infrastructure, or streetscaping that causes drivers to slow down a little--can provoke some serious (and a little ironic) ire from drivers. But as the LA Times explains, there are also plenty of local advocates who have had enough of drivers treating streets like their own personal Indianapolis Speedway and have begun to develop creative ways to get drivers to slow down a little. Here are a few examples of DIY traffic calming measures that have cropped up in the last few years:
-- Dava Waite of Sherman Oaks has posted signs that read "Slow Down, You're Almost Home" and "Slow Down for a Peaceful Neighborhood." The idea is to remind drivers that the neighborhood they are speeding through is their own.
-- Joe Linton, one of the masterminds behind LA Creek Freak and the ever-popular CicLAvia, and some of his compatriots at the Eco Village apartments in Koreatown painted a large road mural at the intersection of Bimini Place and White House Place.
-- A parklets program is making its way through City Hall. The program is the result of a Downtown Neighborhood Council working group spearheaded by Valerie Watson, who also helped with one of Downtown's most notorious street reconfigurations, the Spring Street Bike Lane.
The article also mentions some other traffic calming alternatives, like lining streets with trees ("The canopy works to 'condense the drivers' view and tends to make them drive slower") or planting holograms of children playing in the streets (that strategy received negative reviews when employed in West Vancouver, Canada). For a more institutional example of current traffic calming projects in LA, the Bureau of Street Services and the LA Department of Transportation are working on a slew of measures for Third Street in Little Tokyo.
· DIY speed bumps: Traffic control for neighborhoods [LA Times]
· Parking Space Parklets Could Last Past Park[ing] Day in Downtown [Curbed LA]
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