Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by tetromino_ on Monday June 06, 2016 @09:16PM
(#11851761)
> replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs. Seriously. It's both cheaper and discourages through traffic.
... at the expense of being impassable for road bikes, generating vast clouds of dust (fun for pedestrians), high noise levels (fun for the local residents), being a major pain to plow in the winter, and having the occasional rock spraying from under a tyre damaging paint or smashing someone's windshield.
Re:Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war
by ghaff on Monday June 06, 2016 @09:19PM
(#11851773)
>replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs
And throws up a lot of dust and needs to be continuously patched and graded for potholes and washboarding. It can also get ripped to shreds by snowplows if the ground isn't hard frozen. (And even then a lot of material can be scraped off if the snowplow operator isn't good.)
Source: Have a gravel driveway and my family has a house on a fairly long private gravel road.
Basically, the problem boils down to suburban streets being too hospitable to vehicular traffic. Remove the center dividing line, remove street parking, and narrow the street down to 18 feet wide at most (this provides just enough room for two SUVs side-by-side). Allow redevelopment up to the new desired edge of the street to make it even more visually narrow. Nobody is going to commute through these kinds of streets.
And an alternative for the low-density suburban junk - replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs. Seriously. It's both cheaper and discourages through traffic.