Something I'm starting to notice is how siloed DPWs are in the US. Parking does parking stuff, planning does planning stuff, and same for engineering, stormwater, forestry, etc. Europeans don't do this, and I wonder what their org structures look like.

Le DDOT supprime le vélo ; les Néerlandais supprimeraient l’auto.

Hoe zou Nederland U Street en Florida Avenue aanpakken? Door geen concessies te doen aan de veiligheid. Met een breedte van slechts 13,7 meter is het duidelijk: hier passen geen veilig fietspad, snelle busbaan én drukke autoweg samen. DDOT schrapt de fiets; Nederland zou de auto schrappen.

How would the Netherlands fix U Street and Florida Avenue? By refusing to compromise safety. With just 45 feet curb-to-curb, it's clear the road can't hold a safe bikeway, a fast busway, and a busy highway. DDOT scraps the bikeway; the Dutch would ditch the highway.

I feel like there's a way to drag John Muir's racism against indigenous peoples into this.

On the same token, the folks who say they get tickets all the time when they go to the city are being whiny, demonstrably bad drivers. But for normies, they want to drive safely and the speed limit. A DOT shouldn't then encourage them to break the law with bad design.

The difference is that roads, in my mind, do communicate, sometimes in very obvious, "loud" ways, which I'd describe as yelling.

It is annoying when a city designs a system that says two contradictory things: speed, but don't speed. It's bad, unsafe, and makes people feel manipulated. And annoyed.

The psychology of roadway design is well documented. Wider lanes means people tend to go faster, for instance, while chicanes or vertical elements nearer the lanes do the opposite.

A road's speed and expectations should be self-enforcing and clear to the driver even if they missed the signs.

Also: these sorts of speed traps sour everyone on speed cameras so they can't be deployed like they should be, which is everywhere.

DC is particularly egregious, with some freeway-style roads having outrageously low limits, like 40mph on a 60mph design.

(And we all outsource our thinking, it's a necessary part of living in society.)

Not the first time this very specific critique has surfaced.

But the failure isn't idiocy; it's what happens when the people you outsource your thinking to are deliberately gaslighting you.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Well, yes. Shitty signalization practices are shitty.

But given that they generally look the same, one risks rewarding inaccessible design and punishing accessible design.