Stopping on North Morningside

One day last week stop signs appeared on North Morningside Drive, at the intersection with Cumberland Road.  There already were stop signs on Cumberland, so with the addition of the signs on Morningside, it was a four-way stop, even though there was no signage (yet) to indicate that.  The neighborhood email lists made note of the new signs and the city tried to get drivers' attention with orange "road work ahead" signs on Cumberland, but it probably still will take a few weeks for drivers to get used to having the stop signs there.

A year or so ago the city put four-way stops at East Rock Springs and North Morningside and at East Morningside and Rock Spring Road.  Although it made the merge from North Morningside to East Morningside more difficult, it was easy to avoid it by a change in route.  (But that meant I went straight on Pelham, and one morning soon after I changed my route I almost ran the stop sign at Pelham and Pine Ridge; it wasn't my usual route, yet, and I wasn't looking for a stop sign there.)  Those four-way stops did slow down the traffic, and I don't see people run the stop signs often, so I'm optimistic that the new signs at Morningside and Cumberland will do the same.  It will be much safer for pedestrians crossing Morningside.

It's distressing to see the complaints about this on the neighborhood email lists, that if the problem is speeding, enforce the speed limits, but that the priority should be for motorists to get where they want to go as soon as possible, that the four-way stop will create a "totally unnecessary back up" during morning and evening rush hours.  The people out walking their dogs or pushing their toddler in a stroller or riding their bikes -- well, they should just stay out of the way, I guess, because God forbid that a driver have to stop at a stop sign.

I just read The Great Neighborhood Book, which has an entire section on traffic, which is to say on the adverse impact speeding cars have on neighborhoods.  "For 80 years, traffic engineers have been trained to see their job as moving cars through cities as rapidly as possible with a minimum of inconvenience.  Little thought was given to how pedestrians, kids at play, and entire neighborhoods were inconvenienced and even terrorized by roaring traffic."  Yes.  Exactly.  

Now, if we could just get a crosswalk at Wessyngton and Cumberland....