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Comment by philips | Hacker News Reader

100% as a parent the issue is cars interacting with children.

A suboptimal but creative solution I saw recently was neighbors working together to remove their backyard fences to create a large and safe play area for children in the suburbs.

I don’t know what the solution is but it is frightening how society at large just accepts the deaths and injuries. And in my neighborhood how people drive fast around blind corners knowing there is an elementary school 5 blocks away and kids everywhere on all manner of bike/board/walk.

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> suboptimal but creative solution I saw recently was neighbors working together to remove their backyard fences to create a large and safe play area for children in the suburbs.

This is something I would love to do, but still feels so impossible. I see some homes compromise and put gates in the fence. Where I am, I see probably 70%+ of homes with backyards using them as bathrooms for their dogs, and I imagine that many people would have a problem just with the basic social contract of who cleans dog poop.

Particularly due to COVID, I've begun to appreciate just how severely the suburban structure negatively impacts all aspects of our lives. You have HOAs that invest in common playgrounds, cities that have invested in parks, and virtually everyone reports extremely high satisfaction with these things. Yet my own feelings of isolation tells me that we need much much more. I'm at the point that I would seriously seek out and move to a place with a walk-able kid-friendly setup. But it just doesn't exist.

We found a place that was somewhat friendly to being walkable in that school and parks are close. But shopping, library and activities are all a few miles away. But then we added an electric cargo bike (Tern GSD) and it really expanded our sense of connectivity and joy. After almost 400 miles in 5 months it has been great for us.

The solution is to make the streets safer. There are well-documented traffic calming methods that work. On neighborhood streets like the one you may be describing that could include things like chicanes and mini roundabouts.

The rub is that they make driving less convenient, so it’s hard to get people to support them. But between making our streets safer for kids and making driving a little easier I will always choose safety.

> The solution is to make the streets safer.

This assumes that maniacs and teenagers won't work their ass off to make those traffic calming methods ineffective.

My neighborhood has regular speedbumps, curvy roads, and a speed limit of 25mph. The local crazies accelerate to 50+mph right after they drive over the speed bump.

Speed bumps and curvy roads aren’t necessarily going to be effective at traffic calming; it depends on the context. For example, are they very wide curvy roads? Because those aren’t actually going to slow down drivers.

Beyond that, yes, even with traffic calming some people will be reckless. That’s when enforcement comes into play, but it only works effectively on neighborhood streets in concert with traffic calming. (Otherwise you’ll waste your resources and make people mad because everyone will be speeding!)

Absolutely! Traffic calming can play a role. In fact I have been working with the County on traffic calming here. But their process is silly: paper ballots sent to homeowner’s (but not apartment renters!) along the road and a 67% turnout is required for a vote to pass.

We worked hard canvassing and educating and “only” got a 52% turnout and a 100% yes vote for traffic calming. So the vote failed.

I wrote a 10 page report on all of the ballot design failings, administrative issues, equity issues, etc and they are reforming the program and introducing digital ballots. Still working on that 67% requirement though (a recent 9 figure school bond passed with a 37% turnout).

As someone involved in election systems to some degree it was eye opening seeing something so poorly designed and executed.

That said traffic calming isn’t necessary if the roads are designed to prioritize pedestrians from the beginning. It is a patch to a bad design- or at least a design that prioritizes the wrong thing.

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