On the heels of two tragic car crashes, many St. Louisans are asking for safer streets. Last year, St. Louis saw a disproportionately high number of traffic deaths in just a few months, with one advocate calling St. Louis' traffic violence an "extreme" problem.
The city announced recently that it would be investing $40 million in ARPA funds to institute traffic calming measures and improve street safety. But what do traffic calming measures look like — and how do they work? Randy McCourt is a retired transportation engineer and the former president of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He told KMOX more about traffic calming.
McCourt said that when streets are long, wide and open, people in cars are likely to speed, whether they know it or not. And, he said, it's common for streets to be built wider than they need to be.
"And so to deal with that a series of measures were developed," McCourt explained. "It can range from things like horizontal deflection, which would be like speed humps, speed tables, raised pedestrian crossings, raised intersections, or traffic calming roundabouts."
McCourt also touched on how traffic calming measures can affect road rage. He pointed out that while many people don't view digital speed meters as particularly helpful, but a reminder of where a driver is in the moment can actually have an impact.
"I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and says, 'You know, I'm gonna go speeding through neighborhoods,' they just got a lot of things on their mind," he said. "They gotta go to work, they're late for soccer practice, they got to pick up the kids, they need to go out to dinner with their wife or their husband, and they're thinking of a lot of things. And when something active reminds you of the circumstance, it does it."
Hear more about how traffic calming measures can be implemented, and what they could do in St. Louis:
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