In my town, there’s a stretch of road, 5 lanes wide, that’s about a mile and a half long, as straight as an arrow and as flat as a pancake. We happen to live at the midway point of this stretch. My husband has lived here for 29 years, since the time it was a 2-lane country road with peaks and valleys. It’s always been a relatively peaceful area. And then along came COVID.
During lockdown, people were desperate to find things to do. I get it. I think I watched every reality show from every English-speaking country on earth. But I don’t think that would have been sufficient entertainment for young adult males. No. They had to find some way to burn off all that testosterone without close human contact.
Apparently, they looked at our now completely deserted road and realized it would make an excellent racetrack. Let the games begin! The police were already overwhelmed, and didn’t look upon this as a priority. There were no pedestrians on the road at that time, so we kind of gritted our teeth night after night and prayed that a car didn’t come tumbling through our yard to land in our living room. (We’ve had a car land in our yard before, when a police officer performed a pit maneuver during a high-speed chase right in front of our house, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.)
It was annoying that these races often took place in the wee hours of the morning, especially for those of us who were still having to go to work. (As a bridgetender, I was considered an essential worker. Heaven forbid that the sailboats be prevented from moving from one side of the bridge to the other, even though there was nowhere to go, really.) But before these racers had been taught to be hyper-aggressively selfish, as they were when public health became politicized, they probably justified themselves by thinking that it’s not like most people had anything to wake up for at that time, anyway.
The drifters were even worse than the drag racers. Drifting is doing (theoretically) controlled skids on curves, and for lack of curves, these fools would do loop de loops down the length of our street. The squealing sounds and the smell of burning rubber were an assault to our senses. The curlicue skid marks on the road became a permanent fixture around here.
Listen to me, speaking in the past tense, as if these shenanigans stopped after lockdown, or something. They haven’t even slowed down. It happens at least 4 nights a week, usually somewhere between 1 am and 3 am. And they’ve gotten even more brazen. Sometimes they do it in broad daylight, weaving in and out of terrified commuters and pedestrians, without a care in the world.
The police are well aware of the problem. Residents continually complain. When we call, they ask if we’ve gotten a license plate. But it’s not like these guys give advanced notice. And if you’re tending to your tulip bulbs and all of a sudden a car blasts past you at what seems like 120 miles per hour, it’s not as though you can whip out your camera and snap a picture.
It’s amazing that more people haven’t gotten killed. Some have. One was a young boy riding a bicycle. I thought, “Surely things will change now.” But no.
We’ve asked the police to set up cameras. They have not. We’ve offered to let them park in our driveway. They have not. If we do call the police and somehow manage to finesse our way past the lack of a license plate number, we know that if they bother to show up, the culprits will be long gone, so why bother to call? And if they don’t bother to show up, we’re treated to a follow up text that says, “Due to staffing shortages…” Blah, blah, blah.
My husband is such a sound sleeper that you practically have to drop an anvil on his ankle to wake him up, so while he’s concerned and annoyed at these racers and drifters, he still gets a decent amount of sleep. I, on the other hand, am at my wit’s end. The other night I got three whole hours before I had to get up to go to work. You know that squiggle line cartoonists draw above their characters’ heads to indicate exhaustion? One of those is my constant companion. I’m sure of it.
Now, since this is the Pacific Northwest, the land of stoicism, where waves are rarely ever made, this could very well be the end of the story. Except I’m not from the Pacific Northwest. I don’t hold with that polite but quiet shit when injustice crosses my path. That, and I’m on the autism spectrum, so when something isn’t right, I can’t stop until I know why. In this case, the why is, WHY DO WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SH*T????
They say you can’t fight city hall. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never persuaded anyone to do anything they weren’t already planning to do, ever. So you’d wonder why I even bother. But I can’t help myself. It’s a compulsion. And it’s worse when I know the problem impacts more than just me.
So, after some serious thought on the subject, I realized that it would be a lot easier to make our stretch of road unattractive to these racers than it would be to catch and stop them. So Dear Husband provided me with the name of the guy in our town who is responsible for street design. He’s the Transportation Engineering Manager in our Public Works Department.
I have been working for one department of transportation or another for about 30 years, so I’m not unfamiliar with street design. I also can write one hell of a letter. So I went to Google Earth, took a few screen shots of various sections of the road in question, and started marking potential changes in red.
I decided to ask for the sun, moon, and stars, in hopes of getting, with any luck, the waxing or waning moon, at least. So, how about a few roundabouts at some intersections? And instead of an unobstructed central “suicide lane” all the way down, maybe some intermittent traffic islands in places that don’t obstruct driveways or side streets? That would not only deter the drifters, but also give jaywalking pedestrians a safe midpoint on which to stop before bolting into traffic once again. (Because they’ll do that, like it or not.) But while we’re on that subject, the place where people jaywalk the most really needs a crosswalk with a light. And by the way, they jaywalk there because the parking lot to the public park is always full, so why not expand that parking lot?
I stated that I knew these improvements would cost money, but that if they saved even one life, and if it prevents the city from being sued by one bereaved family member, it would be worth it. It would certainly improve my ability to get a full night’s sleep, and that would make the streets much safer, too. I also casually mentioned that I’d be blogging about this, and if the Engineering Manager felt I’d see more progress by approaching the city council, I’d be happy to do so.
When I emailed the letter and the illustrated imagery to the Engineering Manager, to his everlasting credit, he immediately responded that he’d review it and get back to me by the end of next week. And he most definitely did, in great detail.
He started off by saying . “I’m sorry to hear that you are having difficulty sleeping due to traffic on (XYZ) St. Unfoxtunately, this is an issue in all the urban areas in this region. Our Police Department has an active street racing program and they have successfully reduced street racing in (town), but they have limited resources.”
Got it. So you don’t take my concern seriously, think I’m overreacting, and are blaming another department for the problem. Standard bureaucrat-eese. Excellent start.
Then he proceeded to tell me about the city’s Transportation Master Plan, which was implemented in 2021, and is to last 20 years. The crosswalk I mentioned is on there, and might show up between now and 2041. The other stuff is not on the plan, so won’t be happening. Wonderful.
I understand the need for long term planning, and I get that budgets are limited, but locking themselves into a rigid 20 year plan does not take into account the fact that communities grow and change, and their infrastructure needs grow and change right along with them. So our city basically has erected a brick wall between it and all suggestions, and has hung a sign on it that says, “Come back in 2042.”
He also said that every two years they do a safety assessment to determine which streets should be eligible for safety grants, but those assessments are based solely on traffic accidents in the past 5 years, and therefore our street wasn’t eligible. What about citizen complaints? What about citizen surveys? Some stretches of road have no accidents because they are so freakin’ scary that everyone is hyper-cautious when driving on them. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get attention.
I learned a lot from this effort. Shifting my city will be like turning the Titanic in order to avoid the iceberg. Grab your lifeboat while you can, man, because we’re going down.
But I won’t go quietly. I’ve written a letter to the editor of the town paper. Let’s see if anything comes of that. Probably not, but what have I got to lose? Certainly not more sleep. I’ve already lost as much of that as it’s possible to lose without becoming psychotic.
If you see a problem, Dear Reader, and can think of a solution, it never hurts to speak up. And if it has to do with a government agency, do so in writing. Then, if the problem intensifies, they’ll know there’s a publicly accessible record that a solution was suggested. That makes them nervous. Sometimes, maybe one time in a hundred, something actually gets done. Even if it’s not the solution you suggested, if whatever it is that they choose to do actually improves things, and you know you were the catalyst for that change, it’s extremely satisfying. It’s worth a try.
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