I’m not sure if you’re trying to be sarcastic but this is absolutely hilarious.
Stop signs do not work in the post-pandemic hellscape that is driving a vehicle (or worse, being a pedestrian or cyclist) in 2024. I see multiple cars blow the stop signs on S Boylan every day during the few times that I’m there to witness it. It’s bad.
Those 4-way stops were signals about five years ago. I think roundabouts are the only solution at this point.
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That’ll be great for all the traffic on 3 lane one-way roads through downtown. Single lane roundabouts, which no one in this state seems to be able to understand. It’s ok though, once everyone stops driving cars because it’s been made too inconvenient, BRT will be so popular! Except they won’t be able to rapidly transit through these roundabouts either.
(This wasn’t directed at you, just expressing my frustration in general about how roads work in DT. Completely share your opinion about the four way stops. And no one knows what to do with those either.)
Realistically nothing would work at this point except single lane roundabouts. With the number of cars that run red lights, stop signs, speed excessively in neighborhoods or in general, roundabouts appear to be the lower cost and least maintenance option.
It started off as a bit of sarcasm and a bit of being overboard, but now I think it’s something to actually consider.
I don’t think I’ve heard too much reaction to the speed limits, but the no turn on red have had complaints. I’ve seen quite a few people make rights on red so they aren’t really helping either although I would love to keep the rule in place. The leading pedestrian lights seem to have had a much bigger effect.
On a separate note, I also saw someone posted on Reddit the ABC11 article that discussed the fees provided 1.24million to schools. I am curious what that means for that funding now as well.
The article: City of Raleigh scrapping red-light camera program | abc11.com
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Agree
Very true - this gets ignored frequently. I’d love some statistics around how many tickets RPD has issued for Right on Red violations since the signs were put up because I’d be willing to bet it’s in single digits - they don’t appear to be enforcing this at all which sucks
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I’d be satisfied with people actually stopping before making a right on red. Oftentimes, they just roll through. If people always stopped and looked before turning, I’d have no issue with them retaining that right. Unfortunately, there are too many drivers who don’t.
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The problem is that it is difficult to roll these things back.
Sociopaths are the first ones to do things like speeding, refusing to use turn signals, defacing license plates, tailgating, rolling a right-on-red, not yielding to pedestrians, blowing a stop sign, etc. As more normal people see the sociopaths doing it and getting away with it, they start to do it themselves. Pretty soon it becomes a matter of habit, and then an ingrained part of driver culture, and finally a matter of entitlement that people will argue, vote, threaten, protest, and eventually even resort to violence in order to maintain.
In short I am highly unoptimistic about the possibilty of ever restoring the rule of law to our streets.
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It seems street design is the only option…
Speed bumps work
Raised crosswalks work (better)
Curb extensions work
“Cheese graters” between lanes in no passing zones
Street trees
Eliminating slip lanes
Light timing
What if instead of ticketing, red lights dropped green slime on cars rolling beneath them?
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Finally something unique for Raleigh to differentiate us from other cities! Green slime dumping on red light runners! We could even make it a TV show…
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I’ve been wondering about the speed bumps/raised crosswalks. I vaguely recall hearing something about them impeding emergency vehicles as a reason for not putting them on S Boylan. I wonder if rumble strips leading up to the stop sign might help (without impeding emergency vehicles), similar to when approaching stops on country roads.
Yesterday I saw someone not even for slow (+ speeding) for the stop sign at Boylan/South and then another person nearly rear-end a car that actually did stop at Boylan/Lenoir within a 5 minute period. This morning I saw 3 out of 4 cars treat the stop at Martin/Harrington like a yield and the one that did stop was almost fully in the intersection before they did.
This is so dangerous in areas with lots of pedestrian traffic.
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People would speed over the rumble strips anyway, and neighbors would complain about the added noise (and the fact that people still don’t stop)…increased, consistent enforcement (with actual consequences) is likely the only way to solve this issue - and that seems unlikely given how little the Police seem interested in doing these days
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I completely agree that how we design our cities matter, and like usual I think that we should start paying attention to it from the inside out. That is to say, start with downtown and expand outward.
I’ve personally seen curb extensions alone transform an area from one that clearly prioritized cars to one that clearly prioritizes pedestrians. Just starting with that one thing can radically transform our downtown grid.
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Speed bumps/raised crosswalks would definitely make sense. With the speed limits downtown at 25MPH anyway, why not put raised crosswalks? I don’t understand the argument about impeding emergency vehicles. If that were the case, then speed bumps would not be available at all. There are some that have cut outs specifically for emergency vehicles, but I’ve seen news videos where people get confused as to how to drive over those.
It definitely needs to be a culture change. The problem is that the red light cameras or enforcement push for this type of thing. Without any type of enforcement, it becomes a whole culture of “nothing will happen” so they do it anyway. The only thing that will change this is people (cars, pedestrians, or cyclists) getting into injury accidents by red light runners.
As far as downtown, this can be pushed. It may as well be pushed anyway. The feeling of "if you’re going to drive downtown, you shouldn’t expect to drive fast. It should be the same in residential streets.
Side note:
Here’s traffic calming in a town called Bad Oldesloe in Germany. It literally closes down to one lane to get around it which slows the speeds down. Note the speed limit is 30kph or ~18mph. I can’t grab a street view image showing the traffic calming on Harps Mill, but people threw a fit with those ones. Those really allow for 2 lanes of traffic to flow through, but people found them confusing. 
That’s a typical vague NIMBY response to speed bumps, like shadows from tall buildings.
You know what slows down emergencies vehicles way more than speed humps? Congested traffic.
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As someone who drives a smaller European coupe, I hate speed bumps with a passion. My car has the stock suspension, but is low enough that I have to basically stop and crawl over speed bumps to avoid bottoming out. Meanwhile, needlessly huge trucks and SUVs continue to go blazing over speed bumps because those are far enough off the ground that the suspension can handle hitting them at higher speeds.
I don’t, either. Apparently, the neighborhood inquired about them with the city and the city denied the request. I wasn’t involved and am probably missing key details.