Tag Archives: speed limit

Gretchen and Paige on WCTV about Quarterman Road

So we were riding our bicycles today, and Gretchen got a phone call from Carolyn saying WCTV (Channel 6, Tallahassee/Thomasville) was at her house and wanted an interview, but she was at work and couldn’t do it. Gretchen rode down there, and this is the result: Slowing Down Speeders, by Deneige Broom:
Quarterman Road in Hahira was paved within the last year.

Some people who live there say people drive faster than the posted 35 miles per hour limit.

The Georgia Department of Transportation says this type of paving is safe for up to 45 miles per hour.

Lowndes County agreed to lower the speed limit to 35 miles per hour after they heard concerns from residents.

Since GDOT says the 45 mile per hour is acceptable, a posted speed limit of 35 can’t be enforced without approval.

Residents just want something done.

“We had drag racers out here a few weeks ago, two corvettes speed racing side by side up and down the road,” said Gretchen Quarterman who lives on the road. “It’s a neighborhood, we have 30 families that live on this road, they have small children.”

How did WCTV hear about this? They saw our neighbor Carolyn on YouTube: Continue reading →

“Your streets are designed to kill people.”

Vision Zero Roads that are designed to kill, By Mark Rosenberg, August 18, 2009:
They said the speed limit should be 30 kilometers per hour (about 18.6 miles per hour) or less if we wanted pedestrians to have much of a chance of surviving.
That’s what people in Sweden say. In their country, roads are actually designed to be safe. Unlike ours:
“This is where you live? This is your neighborhood? Your streets are designed to kill people.’’
It’s not hard to find descriptions of Sweden’s Vision Zero for no road deaths:
Vehicle speed is the most important regulating factor for safe road traffic.
Hm, so slower is safer.

Quarterman Road (like many other rural roads in Lowndes County) is a local neighborhood road, with tractors, bicycles, dogs, deer, and mothers rolling babies in strollers. According to Claes Tingvall, Director of Traffic Safety, Swedish Road Administration:

The idea of ”shared space” between pedestrians and vehicles has been trialed successfully in Gothenburg and other cities, as long as the environment has been redesigned for slow traffic.
And a budget-conscious county may be interested that he also says this:
The new safety principle, to control kinetic energy, is by itself cheaper than accident prevention. And once that investment is made it produces benefits every year.
Not to mention the benefit of fewer traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths.

A Local Rural Road is Not a Collector

Quarterman Road is a local rural road through a rural neighborhood. Reclassifying it as collector and raising the speed limit would create a safety hazard.

The first map below is from the Lowndes County Thoroughfare Plan dated January 28, 2003; this is the version currently on the county’s public web pages. It plainly shows Quarterman Road (near the top center) as a local road.

Thoroughfare Map, Lowndes County, Georgia

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) told me that it is possible to classify parts of a road differently, especially when the major source of traffic is (in GDOT’s example) a subdivision that is located closer to one end. This is confirmed by the second map, from the South Georgia Regional Development Center (SGRDC), Continue reading →