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| CANADA'S SOURCE FOR TRAFFIC CALMING HUMOUR, PARODY, AND SATIRE
NEW WESTMINSTER-- The city of New Westminster, a quiet residential community that lies between the metropolitan centre of Vancouver and its outlying suburbs, has long been treated as a thoroughfare for city-bound commuters. The traffic bedeviled city, hoping to reduce the number of rush-hour vehicles that travel through its now-noisy neighbourhoods, has been testing different methods of traffic-calming . Hundreds of thousands of drivers use the side streets of New Westminster as shortcuts to their Vancouver destinations, but with recently installed "speed mounds" the city hopes that the flood of traffic will be reduced to a trickle.
The city tried other so-called calming solutions before, with limited success. Chicanes, chokers, neckdowns, roundabouts, speed humps, bumps, dips, and grooves, had been established in various parts of the city, but those efforts only resulted in more traffic, as drivers have found the interesting measures to be more fun than effective. But the new speed mounds, giant asphalt obstacles that rise from the streets like macadamized moguls, should put an end to the chicanery and return the residential roads to its...residents. "I believe that this is the traffic solution that residents were looking for," said Miles Rhode, city engineer. "Of course there were a few bumps to work out at first. There were some hurdles, a few stumbling blocks, and the occasional bump in the road. But we were able to smooth out the difficulties and pave our way to a reasonable conclusion." Designed to hinder but not to impede, the speed mound, already called "the mother of all speed bumps", is a wonder in traffic-calming technology. For a driver to overcome the speed mound, the vehicle must come to almost a complete stop. The driver can then shift his SUV (all Canadians drive SUVs) into four-wheel drive and slowly ascends the mound. When the vehicle reaches the other side of the speed mound, it shifts back into regular gear and normal driving can resume. It remains to be seen--and driven upon, whether this new traffic-calming idea will achieve the desired result. But residents, and local skateboarders, are hopeful that the speed mounds will remain. If the speed
mounds do not turn out to be effective, Miles is ready to try out his
next traffic-calming idea, the street moat, an ambitious traffic solution
involving draw-bridges, palisades, and boiling oil.
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