Back in college, I had a wonderful professor named Dr. Mike Heller who dropped a piece of wisdom on my class one day. Dr. Heller said that whenever he learned about a situation that a whole lot of people were very fired up about, he would take a step back, pause, and think to himself, “There is probably more going on here than I realize.”
When I learned that the city of Martinsville was replacing several perfectly functional traffic lights with stop signs in the Uptown area, I did my level best to adhere to this wisdom. Sure, everyone I talked to about the situation was strongly opposed to the change, but I knew there had to be a logical reason why the traffic signals were deactivated. I just had to figure out what I was missing.
Having done some research and considered all the points I had initially not realized, I have come to a tentative conclusion:
This is dumb.
This column should probably be a little longer than 200 words, so allow me to go into greater detail and explain why this action was ill-considered.
For those unfamiliar, about a year ago, a committee of city employees was formed to figure out ways to enhance Uptown’s accessibility. Having worked in the larger Uptown area for a cumulative 15 years, I’ve never found the city inaccessible, but sure, why not.
This committee determined that the city needed to be made more walkable. Recommendations included better sidewalks (sure), improved lighting (makes sense), and improved road signage (sounds great).
Somewhere along the way, it was determined that Uptown had a problem with people speeding, not to mention too much traffic. Having visited multiple cities during the course of my life, I would argue that Martinsville has the least traffic and is the most walkable of any city I have ever visited, but I’m willing to follow them down this road.
It was then determined that the best way to improve safety and walkability would be to remove five traffic signals and replace them with stop signs. According to Martinsville Chief of Police Rob Fincher, “It gets people looking around the area a little bit more, so not only are they slowing the traffic uptown, but it’s forcing them to look at the businesses that are around them as they’re going up. It also forces people to drive defensively because they’re concerned. They don’t just pay attention to their phone and wait for the light to turn green and go. They’re actually looking to see what other people are doing.”
Additional articles I have read cite studies of other communities that have replaced their traffic lights with stop signs and improved walkability.
What I’m about to say will sound mean-spirited and dismissive, and that’s because it is and that’s the way I intend it. But this strikes me as a classic example of a phenomena I like to call, “an MBA read an article and now it’s everybody’s problem.”
First things first, all of these changes are predicated on the idea that the average driver understands how the concept of “right of way” works. This is not the case. At least once a week when I’m driving through Martinsville and Henry County, I find myself approaching a yield sign only to see another driver I’m supposed to be yielding to stop in the middle of traffic to wave me through. The four-way stop below the old courthouse is basically just a low-speed game of chicken. We do not need to introduce more confusion to this equation.
Secondly, what is “walkability?” It’s a term from the 1960s that has recently become one of the reigning buzzwords in the world of urban planning. It’s basically the idea that urban planning should include more than just corridors for vehicles, but should also focus on pedestrian accessibility. I’ll be the first to agree that walkability is an excellent goal for any community. Take Collinsville, for example; there are many wonderful businesses I enjoy patronizing in Collinsville, but I’d rather drive down Virginia Avenue blindfolded than cross it on foot.
I have worked in the city of Martinsville off and on since 2007. I have walked all over Uptown. I have never once found this experience burdensome or unfriendly to pedestrians. As a pedestrian, I have also found the traffic signals quite useful because if I’m crossing the street while a guy has a red light, I figure there’s at least a 90 percent chance he isn’t going to run me over. The same cannot be said of a guy at a hastily implemented stop sign.
I’d also like to point out that as far as I can determine, there was no public hearing held regarding this change. I would have assumed a public hearing would have been required, not just as a gesture of goodwill, but possibly from a legal perspective.
But disregarding all of that, here’s what galls me about this change. It’s not just about replacing traffic signals with stop signs. It’s about a repeating pattern of behavior that I have been witnessing over and over again for about two decades.
When I got my first job out of college with the Martinsville Uptown Revitalization Association (MURA) in 2007, there was one question on everybody’s lips: what can we do to attract businesses to Uptown Martinsville? There are a whole lot more businesses Uptown now than there were back then, but it’s still the main point of conversation in the city.
How does the city generally attempt to answer that question? By halfway trying a flash in the pan idea that someone heard about at a seminar somewhere, inevitably abandoning it, and then moving on to the next shiny thing.
You know how you actually promote business and tourism in a city? By making it friendly to businesses and tourists.
There was an Uptown restaurant I used to frequent about ten years ago. The owner told me one day that he was planning to add some pool tables. A month or so went by and I asked him where the pool tables were. He said that there was a line in the city code barring pool tables in restaurants unless they were on the ground level of the building, and the only place he could have put them was downstairs. He also told me that he had wanted to get a neon sign for his restaurant but he was barred from doing so because he was in the historic district.
That pool table rule was a holdover from the days of Prohibition and speakeasies, while the heyday of neon was the 1920s, so I’m not entirely sure how historic we’re trying to get here. Anyway, he closed his restaurant within a year.
When I was working for MURA, I helped out with a TGIF concert Uptown. We had rented some little wood-frame putting greens to set up in a parking lot. While the rental company was assembling the putting greens, a city official came by and asked if we had paid our $250 “Amusement Fee” for having putting greens within the city limits. We paid the fee and never rented putting greens again.
If you want businesses to move Uptown, you don’t nickel and dime them and micromanage them into oblivion. You don’t change the city slogan or pick a new mascot or tear down the traffic lights. You give people some degree of flexibility to run their businesses as they see fit and make it so that if they decide to paint their front door eggshell white instead of ivory, it doesn’t require a notarized letter of recommendation from the Dalai Lama.
But I don’t know. Maybe there is more going on here than I realize. I’ll have time to reflect on this question since avoiding Uptown adds a couple of minutes to my morning commute.
