When It Rains, It Pours

 There's no denying that weather happens to every city. If it didn't, we'd live in an airless void, which I guess means we wouldn't live, which means no city because no people.

But I digress.

My point is that every city has weather. Cities have different climates, of course, and thus different weather occurs in them, but the common issue of needing to allow people to continue to operate the city regardless of the weather crops up worldwide.

And one of the most consistent issues that cities have to deal with is rain. Most places people choose to live, especially in urban numbers, get rainfall. Some more, some less, but some.

Heck, I've even been in Phoenix in a rainstorm. It happens.

But what cities do to deal with that rain can be highly variable, and can massively impact the experience of living there. Today, I want to talk about some rain options I've seen, and how they operate.

1. Just Suck It Up (Because You Can)

This is the attitude of cities like Seattle and London to rain: yeah, it rains here. So? 

Now, this kind of attitude actually relies very heavily on the urban infrastructure, which is designed to handle (most) rain because it's a common occurrence.

Take this sunny photo of Pike Place Market in Seattle. Notice anything about the market itself? That's right, it's covered. Seattle assumes that there will be a lot of days where it's at best overcast and likely drizzling or actively raining; as such, it defaults to design where public spaces are rainproofed. This empowers the city's moment-by-moment unconcern for rain: it's already built into the plans.

It's subtler in an open, uncovered space like the University of Washington's Red Square, but the bricks here are organized and patterned so that the ground channels water down to massive drains, leaving the space not dry, but not puddled or hazardous, in all but the worst moments of a squall.

The city is built to just accept the rain, because it's easier than fighting it.

2. Wait, It Rains? What Do We Do?

The flip side of this is cities that seem to sometimes forget that it rains at all.

Sometimes I worry that Davenport is one of these.

In these cities, there may be rain infrastructure (there's a drain in the above picture, somewhere, though it's losing the war to the water) but it's not well maintained, and seems mostly vestigial as a result of standardized city planning, rather than intentional for the space.

Even unclogged drains may not be up to the task of draining the water the comes when it does actually rain.

Sometimes, this is should be linked to climate change: perhaps the style or frequency or intensity of rain is changing. But often it feels more like a cost-benefit analysis: everyone will hate it when it rains anyway, so is it worth the money to improve this system for a time that won't be appreciated?

Doing similar things with snow and ice leads to a lot of freeze-thaw cycles, though that's technically beyond the scope of this post.

3. Prepare But Don't Stress

Then there are cities that fall between these extremes: the ones that actually do things about the rain, but don't keep those preparations visible 24/7 because they don't think it's always coming.

Like Paris, for example:

Notice the available but not used extendable cover in front of Shakespeare & Co. here. 

With apologies for the blurry picture, you can see several other equivalent preparations here, some extended and some not (it had rained that morning). And the cobblestones likewise are good in the rain but not built as intentionally or permanently to deal with rain as Red Square is.

This is a neutral ground, where the city can adapt to a rainstorm but is not constantly cowering in fear of one (not that Seattle fears the rain--but it is always assuming that the rain will return soon). 

What about your city? How do you see it dealing with rain? Does it deal with rain at all? Or are you, like the Quad Cities, constantly surprised when water comes from the sky?

The Goose Creek Connector: The Short-Sighted

 This is the third of three posts on the experience and design of the Goose Creek Connector, following up on the good and the bad of the implementation of the design. Today I want to talk about the elements of the Goose Creek Connector design that aren't misimplemented in terms of what they decided to do, but rather that to me fall short of a good idea in the actual design or planning. 

To be clear, all of these would be fixable in the future! But these are missed opportunities or strange choices that were made. I expect a number of them were made in order to deliver the project faster, cheaper, or at all; I'm not, in this, trying to criticize the designers of this project. They had to actually cost, plan, implement, and negotiate the details of this route, and I'm very glad that they did.

But there are, nevertheless, some points where I think the design could have used some improvement, and could be improved in the future.

1. What The Heck Is Going On Around Kimberly?

So far I've been burying a key part of the design here: the Goose Creek Connector doesn't actually fully connect.

What is going on here, folks? Suddenly we're in Sharrowland, with a vehicle parked across the sidewalk for those who might be using the path as pedestrians. 

And then, as noted last time, it becomes hard to find where you reconnect to the trail proper if you're on a bike (not, admittedly, if you're on foot). Was I supposed to be on the path already? Should I be sharrowsing the road? Who knows!

That's not even getting into the tight turns around Kimberly:

The route takes a 180 here to get to street level.

That, I'm not necessarily critiquing: land is very tight on a major corridor like the Eastern/Kimberly intersection, and the creek itself and the railroad have clearly taken most of the best ways through that aren't the road. The tight turns are necessary, unless you had complete eminent domain power to just bulldoze people's buildings (which would have created massive costs and resistance to the project, so don't do that!).

But the road/sidewalk section sucks. If it were a protected bike lane on the street, that would be one thing. Mississippi Ave is wide enough there: it has parking on one side even though the businesses all have giant parking lots, so if you could take that and make it instead a protected lane you could make this actually connect. Would it cost more? Yes, and I expect that (plus the kneejerk resistance to losing even minimally valuable parking) is why it wasn't done. But it would be a great way to futureproof this route, which right now has a glaring hole.

2. Lack of Intersections

I don't literally mean intersections here, in that I like the fact that you can do an uninterrupted ride from about 33rd to 59th. I mean that there are a lot of missed opportunities to make what is currently a great recreational trail into a great bike connector more generally. I'm not suggesting we should be at Houten, Netherlands-level bike functionality, where houses front on bike paths without a street in sight. But I am suggesting that it would be a great step forward if the new north-south trail had more access points for people to actually get on and off it, particularly from the housing and businesses that are so close to connecting.

Here, the trail splits to go under Kimberly and to intersect with the Kimberly sidewalk (which is its own issue, see below). But there's also a Walgreens literally right next to me as I take the shot: why can't that Walgreens have a connection directly to the trail, instead of looping around?

More broadly, there's a lot of stuff at that intersection, but to get to the Hy-Vee across the street you need to bike about a mile and a half around to the Duck Creek Trail, across Eastern Ave, and back up Spring St. instead of just...across the street. 

Not designed with bikes (or pedestrians) in mind. I also used the beg button here but had it skip 2 straight cycles, so I don't think it works...

Why couldn't these connections be improved?

Likewise, these apartments back onto the trail--why not have a connection?

Now, some of this was outside of the designers' hands (they don't own that apartment complex!) and some would be challenging for political planning reasons (messing with lights/bike lanes around or on Eastern and Kimberly). But that doesn't make them not missed opportunities; it just means that I can see why they are currently missed. I hope they improve; it would be cool to see a path with a gate instead of just a fence at the apartment complexes, for instance. 

3. The Sidewalk Problem

Look, I know I harp on sidewalks a lot. But seriously: make up your mind if you're designing a big sidewalk or an actual mixed-use trail that you expect non-pedestrians to use. And then remember that you're definitely doing the latter, since you literally put bike signage on the trail.

And then stop terminating the exits from the trail onto pure sidewalks--both in terms of the legality of biking on the sidewalk and terms of sheer width. The path itself is a nice width for bikes and pedestrians to coexist. The sidewalks they deliver you to are not.

And sometimes those sidewalks just end themselves: Kimberly doesn't really have any, for instance, except the bit used for the trail itself.

Again, I see why this happens: dumping pedestrians into the street is bad, and the cost would skyrocket to redo all the sidewalks into full paths as well (though Bettendorf has a lot of those, so there's local precedent at least). 

But dang if it doesn't meant that you can't really use the connector for anything much besides driving from end to end: the places it delivers you in the middle are either not well connected to the path (see #2) or only accessible on foot.

It's great for recreation, in other words, if all you're doing is biking a long distance along the path. But as soon as you want to use it mid-path or to actually get somewhere, it doesn't work nearly as well. Short-sighted, in other words, though not necessarily bad.

And all of this is definitely improvable--if and only if we actually decide to do it.

The Goose Creek Connector: The Bad

 This is the second in my series on the Goose Creek Connector, following up on the good last week.

I liked biking the Goose Creek Connector but there are some ways in which it is not well-implemented, and I wanted to talk a bit about those today.

1. Signage

Quick quiz: where is this?

The only sign you see in the picture is an (already damaged??) bikes-go-downhill sign. There's a small stop sign just out of frame to the right. What there aren't are trail markers, that would tell you where the two dividing sides of the trail go, or a marker on the bridge to tell you what road you're about to go under.

Here's a better view of another fork in the road with absolutely no guidance. 

And this isn't just abstract: I kind of figured I had passed 53rd St. at some point, but the first time I had an actual piece of official guidance of where I was was when I was suddenly dumped out on the sidewalks by 59th St. and could see the regular road signs.

The Duck Creek Trail itself has signs in most places where the road splits off--why doesn't the Goose Creek Connector? 

2. Maintenance

Let's zoom in on that already damaged sign above. That's not a great, well, sign for the trail. And there are other spots where this brand-new trail is already showing signs of less than optimal maintenance.

This is already overgrown to the point where I had to slightly swerve out of the way to avoid hitting the grass on my return trip.

This might, optimistically, be a sign of maintenance happening, but the fact that, again, the week it opened it was already having "sidewalk closed" signs prepared to deal with overgrowth is not ideal.

We'll get to whether this is a sidewalk at all next week.

Basically, I continue to worry about the ongoing state of maintaining, rather than simply opening, this trail--especially when (not if) the low-lying parts flood.

3. Getting Off It

This is where we start almost sliding towards next week's theme of what is short-sighted in the design here. We'll talk about where the trail goes and what opportunities it might miss elsewhere. Right now, I want to focus on this:

Great, the bike route ends. Where the heck am I? What am I supposed to do with the bike I'm on? I don't love trails that dead-end into parking lots, but at least those are clearly intended for people who bike to the trail--not me, but a defined population of people, many of whom use our trails. But this? Bikes are allowed on multi-use trails and paths in Iowa, but otherwise they're vehicles. Legally, they belong in the road.

And this doesn't deliver them to the road. Even if we assume that the bike route ends at the sidewalk, not the sign, there isn't a curb cut there--there is one a bit down the street, but it's not exactly well-designed to get bikes on and off the sidewalk to the trail.

The opposite problem happens just north of Kimberly, where the trail briefly detours into the street (more on that next week) but the signage is only in one direction for getting back on the trail? You can see the back of the sign, but there's nothing from this direction that tells you the trail is going to the left. You're just on either the street or the path (unclear directions on which is the trail coming from the south) and then you have to notice that the trail is going off--otherwise you're right into Eastern Avenue.

Why make this trail so hard to legally get on and off? Why not sign (see #1) more clearly? 

These are not insurmountable problems, and they're not hard to solve either. A few additional signs, a curb cut or two, and some consistent repair and mowing would do it. I'm hopeful that these are just growing pains and we'll see the Goose Creek Connector being well taken care of and well-marked going forward. It just isn't quite there yet.

The Goose Creek Connector: The Good

So the Goose Creek Connector opened recently, and I decided it was worth biking on it and evaluating it as a significant piece of new bike infrastructure here in the QCA. 

It was a very pleasant ride, and I'm going to share my thoughts on the new trail in a three-part series, this being the first.

And because it is the first, I want to start positive, so here we have the good! Check back in for the bad (things that weren't implemented as well as they could be) and the short-sighted (things that were implemented as designed, but designed less than ideally for the future) the next two Sundays.

As I said, it was a good ride, so let's start there:

1. The Ride Experience

The Goose Creek Connector trail is a great trail for recreational cycling: the physical experience is excellent. I mentioned in my prior post that I was hoping that they'd improved the feel, because when it wasn't fully open parts of it felt bumpy. I'm happy to report that I had no such problems this time, and it felt much smoother--as it should, as completely new trail infrastructure!

It's smooth, mostly straight (but not so straight that people get going at ridiculously fast speeds or anything), and generally wide enough to pass two people walking or riding abreast.

The curves are generally pretty easy to navigate--the only places where there are hairpin-type turns are by the Kimberly Rd interchange--and even there the other elements of the design make it easy to tell you're going to have to slow down well before the turn. It was, frankly, a great ride, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

That's a really good thing. That might seem obvious, but I have definitely ridden new bike infrastructure in cities that did not provide a pleasant riding experience. This is one.

2. Completely New Angles on the City

Another really positive element of the new connector is that, because it angles through land that really hasn't been developed or used before along Goose Creek, it opens up a completely new angle on the city.

The back country, so to speak, has been largely inaccessible--a significant section is on the unused (and in some cases unusable) back-end of cemeteries, for instance--and the fact that you can now see these places is very cool.

Then there are things like this big soybean farm that you might not even realize were in Davenport proper until you bike by them. 

More metaphorically, the existence of such a connection that never previously existed opens up new angles on the city as a cyclist. My dad biked from his house to ours--something that was technically possible before but deeply unpleasant, and now can actually be done reasonably. I was able to get to 59th St from Duck Creek Park in about 15 minutes--something that would have taken much longer before, not to mention being almost entirely street riding with cars. It makes Davenport much more open to the cyclist, and much more pleasant to experience.

3. The Views

Relatedly, it's just a gorgeous experience to bike on this trail. I list this separately because you could have gorgeous views that aren't new angles on the city or that are unpleasant to bike along--think the current mess in downtown by the river where they're building the new Main Street Landing and have disrupted the bike trail. The bike experience is thus worse, and there's been bike access there forever, but it's still really pretty.

Here the experience is both new and pleasant--and the views are still pretty.

You can probably already tell that from the pictures above, but here are a few more.

Even the bits that are mostly pavement have nice trees and greenery.

The properties you back on are pretty too--nice fountain, apartment complex!

In all honesty the pictures don't do it justice. Partly that's the nature of foregrounding the trail in the pictures, but also I was busy enjoying the views rather than always taking pictures of them.

Trust me on this: it's a gorgeous ride, and you're in tree cover almost all the way. As someone who does not always enjoy the physical beauty of Davenport, this trail is a great advertisement for how pretty the city can be.

I'll be back next week with quibbles and concerns--some even featuring these same pictures--but for now let's end on a happy note: this was a lovely ride, and I am very excited that the Goose Creek Connector exists!

Welcome the Connector!

 This post is just to say that hey, it's pretty cool that Davenport has finally connected the trails in the north to the main trail along Duck Creek. 

I'm hoping to ride it soon and have more to say--last time I tried, it didn't go so well.

To be fair, they weren't kidding that it wasn't open!

I do hope they've fixed little glitches like this single square of concrete that for some reason hadn't gotten laid.

And the fact that this section was bumpy as hell even though it was supposedly newly laid.

And let's all hope they keep up the underpasses better than the Duck Creek Trail itself sometimes gets.

But overall--congrats to the Davenport Public Works and here's to even more ambitious plans that help connect our bicycling infrastructure in the QCA!

Zen and the Art of Trail Maintenance

This post could also be called "the curse of 'recreational' paths." 

Basically, we had some bad rains and flooding in Davenport recently, and so when I tried to bike home from work I encountered this:

And this was just the one that I bothered to dismount, photograph, and continue. Basically the whole Duck Creek Trail was like this, from pools of water across the entire trail to every underpass choked with mud.

And unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts about that.

1. Bike (and Pedestrian) Infrastructure Should Count 

This is the reason for that alternate title up there: because these trails get identified as recreational, the city (and not just Davenport, in my experience) acts like they don't count as infrastructure. They're just for fun, just for exercise, just for recreation. And thus when there's a storm or some other major disruption they basically don't count in the calculus of what needs repairing, cleaning up, or just general maintenance in the aftermath.

But while it's easy to discount these trails, they're actually pretty important: not only are they unique opportunities to get cars off the road and people moving on distinct paths that have affordances that streets don't (no easier way to get to the softball fields!), they're also relatively small and easy to repair. If we bother, of course. 

In some ways what annoys me most is the tire tracks in that mud up there: someone did drive a vehicle through (and given what I see on the trail they were almost certainly a city employee). But whatever they drove through didn't clear the space. All it would take is a few minutes with a plow to get that mud off--much less than a street takes to clear, because the trail is smaller. But it never happens.

2. Ongoing Problems Compound 

Making that mud worse is the fact that the trail also has consistent spots where it's graded poorly so the water pools instead of draining off. This happens without flooding anytime there's a rainstorm. And every time it makes the trail significantly harder to use--while also compounding itself by encouraging people to use the grass next to the trail instead, worsening the overall health of the trail space.

I'm not suggesting these are as easy to fix as the mud--but I am suggesting that if the only major roadway in an area got the same consistent giant puddles it would have been a much higher priority. 

3. The Knife's Edge

Overall, this is symptomatic of a larger issue with bike and pedestrian infrastructure not only in the QCA but in the US outside of very few cities. It can function for commuting, or eerands, or generally for life for a while, but it's on a knife's edge. Just a little nudge: one storm, one rainfall, a section of trail that wasn't a priority to restore when roadworks took it out, and suddenly the whole system collapses. I had to change my clothes afterwards when I rode this because there was so much mud and water on the trail. If I had had a meeting or other event I needed to be clean for, it would have meant I could not use the bike to get there. And it wouldn't be the bike's fault.

We treat trails and paths and other bike infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure as a complete afterthought, at best. It's always on the periphery--sidewalks and gutter bike lanes get the worst of storms too--and it's always the last priority. This makes it difficult to impossible for people to commit to using it, which creates a vicious cycle where no one uses it and so it looks like investments would be wasted.

So please, keep the dang trails open even after a storm. And stop treating this non-car infrastructure like it doesn't matter--because it can only matter if it gets some actual attention.

QCA Survey

 No post midweek this week, except: take this survey if you're in the QCA to tell our transit agencies what they should prioritize!

Who Runs the Transit?

 This article made me think about the question of how best to organize our local transit agencies here in the QCA for better service. Or, more specifically, what lessons we can take from other places about how to manage transit across multiple kinds of internal legal divisions: municipal, county, state, geographic. After all, the Quad Cities has (more than) four cities, by definition, as well as a state boundary that happens to be a major, wide river in the midst of everything.

But we are not the only place to have such boundaries, even if the Mississippi is a particularly large river. So what can we learn from others?

1. Collective Decision-making

The biggest lesson is that the more we make local decisions about a collective problem (how to move people around the area) the more problems we'll have. When Rock Island decides to make it harder to open shelters because they want to "spread services more evenly across the region," but does so unilaterally, we just end up with less services. The same goes for transit. 

Good transit services, like ThamesLink above, cut across administrative boundaries to provide service that will serve the people who live there regardless of their particularized municipal or regional government. What does that mean here in the QCA? It means not making Bettendorf Transit decisions for Bettendorf and CitiBus decisions for Davenport, or Iowa decisions for Iowa and Illinois decisions for Illinois, but making regional decisions based on populations and potential trips. If a bunch of Iowans work at the Arsenal, or John Deere, we should probably have transit that helps them get there. If a bunch of Illini work at Arconic, same deal--not to mention the two downtowns with their distinct cultural and social amenities.

2. Unify Agencies

More than collective decisions, there's also a collective action issue. You could argue that we actually have some decent collective decision-making here: there's one agency on the Illinois side, and it technically manages the Bettendorf Transit as well, and the Davenport transit connects to it. But the connections are clunky and they happen inconveniently by city boundaries rather than in logical places for a line to actually start or end. 

Just like the TTC used to end awkwardly around the boundaries of Toronto but now emerges into the Greater Toronto Area where it makes sense, it would make a lot more sense to have a single line running down Locust/Middle Road than to have to get off and transfer in a literal Burlington Coat Factory parking lot.

There is a 1-Line TTC stop right on the Vaughan/Toronto (North York) line, but it's not the end of the line or a transfer point; it's just there because there are meaningful things to go to. Similarly, there should still be a stop near I-74 and Middle Road/Locust, but it shouldn't be where the lines stop and force a transfer. 

The fix for this, ideally, is a unified agency (ala the TTC, TfL, WMATA) that runs transit with regard to where the people need to go and not where the city lines sit. 

The DC Metro would be a lot less useful if it only went to the boundaries of DC.

3. Meaningful Transit for an Integrated Community

Of course, the secret background lesson here is that all of these communities run more transit (even per capita) than we do here. And I'm not advocating for DC/London/Toronto levels of transit here in the Quad Cities! But if you want people to unite together to make a collective community, you need to make it not just possible but easy for them to get around.

In a way, the Mississippi could even be a major blessing here, paradoxically because it is so annoying to cross. We only have three main crossings (plus the I-80 Bridge out in LeClaire), which funnels traffic across them and creates major issues when one or more are shut, e.g. for a race. It's hard to put a lot of cars between the two sides of the river, and there's a reason that I meet people who (say they) never go across the river if they can help it.

But mass transit thrives in a situation where a lot of people want to get from one place to another across a narrow channel. 

If we truly integrated our transit, we could make it the easiest and best way to get from one side to the other, and knit the community together.

I'm not advocating for a Blackfriars Station-style bridge-as-transit-station (above) but wouldn't it be cool?

And more to the point, it's a good example that a river doesn't have to mean bad transit connections. In fact, it can mean that people gravitate towards transit, because it makes getting past that barrier easier.

I know this likely seems idealistic, since we haven't managed this in 190 years of having Davenport on the opposite side from Rock Island. But there's no reason we couldn't, if we take the lesson of not dividing our transit and letting it instead tie us together.

Modal Integration and the QCA

 I was looking at my transit cards from various agencies, and thinking how cool it would be if we in the Quad Cities actually had some fare integration, transit integration, or general modal integration: if you could get around the QCA consistently without friction, moving from one mode or agency to another.

And no, I don't just mean being able to stick my bike in the back of my car.

1. Cross-state Integration

I would love to live in a world where there were more real connections between the Citibus in Davenport and the Metro system in the Illinois side. The same company even operates the (inadequate) Bettendorf transit as does the Illinois system! We could do better! 

Look, they do fine for their scale at a US level: they do have buses across the river despite the differing state and municipal authorities. The timing is even OK for transfers, mostly. But holy moly is the opportunity there for more.

Imagine if we could be like WMATA, even though we obviously aren't the DC area, and just have one transit organization that plans and schedules and so on--and that includes multiple river crossings instead of one bus for each of two bridges.

I don't expect a Metro, just decent interstate work.

2. Last Mile Issues

QCA transit has a big last mile problem. You can take a bus a lot of places--sort of. Imagine if we had either more buses or real bike integration with the existing routes! Or even functional sidewalks near major streets! So much could actually work!

I hear protected bike lanes allow people to actually safely bike on the street, not just in Vancouver.

Rumor has it that sidewalks work in Louisville, and could perhaps here, on Kimberly Road even.

Or on Eastern Avenue...except not. 

3. Don't Forget the Ferry!

The Channel Cat is not like the world's most ideal transit mode, but it does provide valuable service shuttling humans across a very wide and inconvenient (in this sense) river. 

It's also not integrated at all with anything else.

Vancouver, like us, has a giant bridge--but they also have the SeaBus across that same body of water.

Toronto will also put you on a ferry as part of your public transportation. And that's not even mentioning that I grew up in Seattle...

I just miss having consistent, connected ferry service that actually feeds into other consistent transit as well.

Consider the possibilities! We could actually have an integrated system and you could get around smoothly and efficiently.

Or we could keep what we have I suppose.

Speed and Streets

Recently, the City of Davenport held a community meeting about what to do with traffic that speeds off River Drive onto River Street in the neighborhood around McClellan Heights. This feels like a good opportunity, then, to talk about how we design our roads around speed and cars. While my thoughts are inspired by this discussion around River Street, I'm not going to focus directly on that because I'm not a traffic engineer and wasn't present for the meeting. Rather, I want to talk more broadly about how traffic speeds are managed around Davenport and the QCA.

1. Too much reliance on speed limits alone 

The article linked above mentions that the speed limit on River Street is 25 mph but cars have been measured up to 68 mph. This is emblematic of the general way speed is "controlled" in the QCA: all speed limit, no street design. The proposal to actually redesign some of the street with bollards may not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, because any direction of actually changing street appearance from "giant open asphalt stretch" is the right direction. 

Basically, the speed limits and the street design don't match: roads with slow limits don't look any different from roads with high limits, and so drivers just drive fast.

2. Lane and speed limit mismatch

This gets worse in places like Brady and Harrison Streets, which can be as low as 25 mph while still having 4 lanes of one-way traffic. No wonder people zoom on through! It's as wide as the interstate. 

Does this look like a 25 mph road to you?

When the speed limit drops, lanes should drop out; and honestly some of these streets should just be fewer lanes. Give us some bike lanes or a bus lane or a tram or something. Parklets. Anything but a giant stroad. And the same goes if the speed doesn't drop but just is lower than the road is designed for.

3. Distinguishing roads and streets would help

The overly fast traffic on roads like River Dr, Brady, and Harrison is because these are among the main throughfares for the city. And there's nothing wrong with those roads being fast! But there isn't sufficient distinction between these roads used for fast movement of cars and streets, which should be more about people using the street for things other than moving through. In other words, we have a bunch of stroads. There's actually good potential here for distinguishing them, since we have a clear set of E-W and N-S routes in Davenport in particular and the QCA more generally. But this work hasn't been done; the roads and streets are designed basically the same and don't feel that different to drive on.

This is why people get so wrought up about road traffic going into their neighborhoods: because the cars will treat their streets like roads. And while they're not wrong that that's a problem, the issue is bigger than one intersection at a time. The problem is that we don't have clear design differences and visual (or even physical) cues to drivers that they're in a space they shouldn't be tearing through. Yes, some places have speed bumps, but that's an extreme and usually ad-hoc approach; comprehensive street design on every street is more helpful. That creates a consistent understanding by drivers of what is expected of them, and a larger set of non-driving options for transportation as well, making it more likely that traffic will actually both reduce in volume and in speed.

It's good to see Davenport considering options for River Street off River Drive--but it would be even better to see some more general overhaul of how we treat speed in the city and the QCA.