[Summit] Traffic

[Brian Sullivan]

Maybe one year ago, at the bottom of Tenth Street, the city built a new
sidewalk with a curbed outcropping jutting out into the street.  By
happenstance, a couple of years earlier I read an article in the nytimes
about traffic control in, I believe it was Holland/Netherlands/Denmark?  It
was Northern Europe.  The whole jist of the article was smart traffic
engineering.  Use your environment to slow people down.  The logic
works like this: If you are running in a field, you will run very fast.
When you come to the edge, you will slow.  When you are on an open trail you
will run very fast.  When the trail is closed in on both sides by trees, you
will slow.  The Netherlands uses far fewer stop signs, lights, and speed
bumps.  What they in fact use is engineering that replicates a naturally
impeding environment.  Such as curbed outcroppings.  It was so interesting
to me to see this in Providence.  And I have noticed the traffic slow on
Hope street at the bottom of Tenth.

If anybody knows the story of how that bit of curbed outcropping came to be
at the bottom of Tenth Street, then maybe that would be a nice solution
further up Hope street.

Brian Sullivan
Tenth Street
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