Tab Combs @DrTCombs@transportation.social

Odds are, you'll know and love at least one of them. Or maybe you'll be the one to kill them.

We need Safe Streets Now.

We are fed PSAs to remind us that 'safety is a shared responsibility,' and then we watch while absolutely no one steps up to take their share.I am sick and tired of watching our roads get deadlier and deadlier for people who aren't driving, while our approach to transportation improvements in most cases is more of the same.Some places are working hard to fix our broken system (h/t #ChapelHillNC for giving it a go). But it's a race against time. 40,000 people will die on our roads this year.

We've created a world in which it's patently unsafe for a kid to walk or bike to school on their own anymore because we refuse to force people in cars to take an ounce of responsibility for anyone's welfare but their own. We refuse to inconvenience anyone in a car so that a little kid might have safe passage across a street. We install BS 'yield to pedestrian' signs so our local governments can point fingers at drivers when they run someone down, rather than actually making intersections safe.

This dude came from the far travel lanes, making a left turn at a flashing yellow arrow that says, "hey dude, if you can find a gap to turn through, go for it!" Which means he's looking up the road for a gap he can gun his roadtank through, and not at a little kid on a bike doing her best to follow the instructions on that tiny sign that, at this moment, are telling her to cross the street. Don't worry kid, I'm sure that guy will see tiny you and stop, even if it means he might get t-boned.

This intersection, at Burning Tree Rd and Raleigh Rd in
#ChapelHillNC has a greenway that dumps us 10' away from the crosswalk. The crosswalk has an automatic walk signal, which is nice, but that signal means diddly squat for safety. Because at the same it's telling us to go into the crosswalk, drivers from 3 different directions have permission to cross the crosswalk. Yes, legally drivers must yield to crosswalk users but in practice, they rarely do.

While this isn't a typical day, it's not uncommon. Fortunately my kid has learned to never trust a car (or anyone in it), and has developed excellent defensive cycling skills. But she's still a kid, which means she's still not capable of processing all the info needs to process to judge risks appropriately and quickly. And this means multiple threat situations, like the one here, could easily be deadly to her.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9063401,-79.0186834,140m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu

Biking 1.5 miles to school today, my kid & I...

1. waited while a school bus ran a stop sign
2. swerved to avoid a car passing us on the left as we turned left
3. sat at a light for 4 min to get a walk signal
4. slammed on the brakes to not get t-boned by an SUV in a crosswalk

We don't pollute, make noise, cause pavement wear, or threaten anyone's safety. Yet our roads still force us to defer to cars or risk death.

And we're the entitled ones? Entitled to what??

#EntitledCyclists #BikeTooter

I was about to do something important and time-sensitive but then I got a
#Teams notification despite both Teams and notifications being off and now I'm just wandering the dusty streets of the internet with a vague sense of loss

For lack of any other ideas I rebooted three times and all's well. I guess.

(on my phone now)
This has got to be the strangest computer problem I have had in a long while!
It's not the drivers and not sticky keys. IT thinks I am crazy. I may be.

win11

help i have actiavated a setting that makes me hold keys 3 seconds before letters appear
#DigitalEntropy

My new one-act play: "Voluntold"

Them: We need your help on an upcoming matter.
Me: Cool, whatever you need.
Them: Specifically, in what ways will you help?
Me: However you need. Just say the word.
Them: You will need to make a formal request on our behalf.
Me: Ok, for what? To whom? X office?
Them: Surely you meant Y office, not X office.
Me: I literally have no clue. What do you need?
Them: Please submit your request in writing by COB, detailing specifically the help you are providing.

best part of my day is the breathless conversations I have with my kid while I try to keep up with her when we #biketoschool

#KidsOnBikes #SafeStreets4All #BikeTooter

Finally, we'll wrap the course with a group discussion on the future of #CompleteStreets. What concepts can we take away from the course and apply right away? Which ones need seismic cultural shifts to be successful? How will we work to make sure those shifts happen...and to make sure they work for everyone?

#SafeStreets4All #CarolinaPlanning (3/3)

Next, we'll study the theories behind many of the most famous 'sustainable safety' street designs from Europe, and discuss why we can't just replicate their physical elements -- we also have to understand their design contexts and fembrace the human-focused philosophies that underpin them if we hope to achieve the same results.
(h/t to our former colleague Mary Elbech for the content and concepts). (2/3)

This week in Complete Streets -- the dessert portion of the course -- we're learning how to (and not to) apply safe street design principles from other cultures to the US transportation context.

First up, the brilliant Carlos Pardo will be zooming in to talk about how to learn from temporary infrastructure and get more people involved in street design, and to spark some ideas for reconfiguring one of our own (disastrous) streets (1/3).

At least once a semester, I have the pleasure of reading a student assignment that is so incredibly excellent that it makes me cry.

#CarolinaPlanning students are as good as they come, y'all, and I'm lucky as heck to get to know them.

I've kept my twitter account just to keep my username claimed. Why anyone would continue to post actual content there is a mystery.