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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

It turns out than bans on through traffic aren't legally enforceable. The signs are merely advisory.

A "no thru traffic" sign may not be legally enforceable, and it's certainly difficult to enforce just from a practical perspective.

But physically making the street not be a through street is possible. Just plop down a couple of Jersey walls and you're done.

Check out how Vancouver made semlin, grant, and gravely forcibly "no thru traffic" here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/DFVJNDF2DftbFzpv9

Aren't you then trapping the residents who live on that street in?

My hometown did this in the late 90's, added three barriers across intersections to cut a neighborhood in half. Here's someone recently suggesting removing them to alleviate traffic on the main north/south road (under construction for the last two years or so), but I doubt anything would happen to them:

https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/community/state-colle...

Traffic bound for North Atherton (bottom left of map) has to go down to the intersection with Park instead of taking Allen.

Easy enough to take a bike through them, I used to ride that way regularly in to campus. But I think it's worked well to not have cars shortcutting through the neighborhood at high speeds.

On the street near me there are just chikanes every 100 metres or so, that massively discourages people from using it for using it as a shortcut, because at rush hours the chikanes become a massive pain in the ass:

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.101503,-1.584329,3a,75y,42.5...

Yep, that seems to be supported by this article[1].

https://padailypost.com/2017/11/17/traffic-complaints-to-res...

Woah.

Can state law change this, or is this a federal funding requirement? (I can't imagine it's a constitutional requirement. Plenty of publicly-funded services from food stamps to the restrooms at Area 51 have restrictions on which members of the general public can use them.)

In some areas governments put up signs like this without stopping to complete the triviality of actually passing a law allowing them to do so.

Whereas there might be nothing whatsoever wrong with such a law you can't legally fine or arrest people for not following instructions you were never legally authorized to give. Essentially anything you put on a sign doesn't gain the force of law.

Example GA went through some drama regarding that notably their local chief of police publicly stated

http://dunwoodynorth.blogspot.com/2017/12/dunwoody-homeowner...

residents in my neighborhood were looking for relief from this cut thru issue along with more enforcement of speeding, stop sign violations and trucks also cutting thru. I reached out to Chief Grogan to share the neighbors concerns and asked that he have the Dunwoody legal staff research the legality of enforcing the "No thru Traffic" on public streets as I personally see the issue as unenforceable.

I wouldn't be surprised if some neighborhoods or property owners also put up fake signs. Wouldn't be the first time.

Occasionally with less selfish motives

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kbnzvw/fake-street-sign-i...

I see a lot of streets where I live that have signs saying no trucks except local delivery. I wonder at what level that is instituted and enforced.

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