HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/20/2021 Item 6n, Schmidt
From: Richard Schmidt <
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2021 9:50 AM
To: E-mail Council Website
Subject: Item 6n -- $4 million for a roundabout!
Dear Council Members:
Four million $$$$ for a roundabout! So non -controversial it's a consent item?
Why is the city throwing around this kind of money for an academically trendy non -solution to traffic
management?
Here are alternatives for "managing" vehicular traffic at the Orcutt-Tank Farm intersection:
1. Stop signs. Cost: a few thousand dollars. High level of safety. Brings vehicles to a cautious stop. Good for pedestrians.
2. Traffic signal lights. Cost: a few hundred thousand dollars. High level of safety. Meters vehicle crossings, brings
alternate traffic directions to a stop. Good for pedestrians.
3. Roundabout. Cost: apparently, as envisioned by staff, $4,000,000. High level of danger: confusing, encourages
aggressive driving, nobody stops, perpetual motion machine. Hell for pedestrians because vehicles never stop and drivers
are so engaged with trying not to be hit by other vehicles they don't look for pedestrians.
So why have you chosen the most expensive, most confusing, most dangerous alternative?
And why does a city that claims to seek a non-autocentric future select the most auto-centric/most pedestrian -
dangerous alternative?
What you're doing, fiscally and physically, makes no sense.
Richard Schmidt
PS. I recently encountered the new roundabout on Orcutt between Laurel and Johnson for the first time. What a
confusing, befuddling mess that is! And totally unnecessary. Staffs refrain is there's a learning curve for us to discover
how to negotiate these textbook nightmares they're foisting upon us; my response is if driving a street requires a learning
curve, the engineering concoction requiring the curve is too complicated to be deployed. The expensive "progressive"
traffic design being foisted on this town is academic BS that will have to be undone, at great cost, in a few years.