Palmer Woods "Traffic Calming Initiative"

The first and second phases of the Palmer Woods Street and Traffic calming project has begun as of April 2013. Some of you may have noticed the heavy road equipment on Woodward Avenue.

This was discussed several years ago on this forum. Several streets of Palmer Woods on Woodward and Seven Mile are being permanently closed, ie; dug up and landscaped. There are traffic diverters in major intersections. It will no longer be the fast speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile.

There are accommodations for cycle and pedestrian traffic. Other city areas and close suburbs have looked at a similar plan

So far this looks good in Palmer Woods.

It took four years of hearings and planning and work to accomplish this task. Might be a blueprint for other areas.

I can't imagine any road in Palmer Woods being a 'speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile'.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I can't imagine any road in Palmer Woods being a 'speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile'.

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Strathcona is many drivers ignore the stop signs and drive way to fast. Makes sense what I saw on Wednesday. I had a feeling they were going to close off the street.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I can't imagine any road in Palmer Woods being a 'speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile'.

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Actually Wellesley is the worst of the three. People come from both Seven Mile entrance and the Woodward entrance and blow through every stop sign.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I can't imagine any road in Palmer Woods being a 'speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile'.

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The "traffic calming" BS is probably just a cover to discourage people from entering the Palmer Woods neighborhood. There's no direct road anywhere through Palmer Woods.

Residents know their property values have the strongest prospects if they become as close as possible to a gated community. Break-ins will be much tougher if you can't easily get in and out.

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Originally Posted by Bham1982

The "traffic calming" BS is probably just a cover to discourage people from entering the Palmer Woods neighborhood. There's no direct road anywhere through Palmer Woods.

Residents know their property values have the strongest prospects if they become as close as possible to a gated community.

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Got to love how when Palmer Woods does it, it is because of traffic but when Harper Woods or Grosse Pointe propose it, it's racism.

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Originally Posted by Shollin

Got to love how when Palmer Woods does it, it is because of traffic but when Harper Woods or Grosse Pointe propose it, it's racism.

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I think Palmer Woods is around 90% black, so it's probably more accurately classism rather than racism.

But, yeah, it isn't really different than what's happening on the GP border. Rich people want to harden the boundaries between their families and investments and nearby potential threats.

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Originally Posted by Bham1982

The "traffic calming" BS is probably just a cover to discourage people from entering the Palmer Woods neighborhood. There's no direct road anywhere through Palmer Woods.

Residents know their property values have the strongest prospects if they become as close as possible to a gated community. Break-ins will be much tougher if you can't easily get in and out.

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Actually Strathcona and Wellesley run from Woodward directly to Seven Mile, and Lincolnshire is a big arc starting and finishing on Seven Mile. All three do see fast traffic. I use Strathcona going from Seven Mile to Woodward when I need to get to 8 Mile when I am in the area. Now we will have to do a Michigan Left at 7 & Woodward to get to 8 Mile.

You still have to do a Michigan left when you get to Woodward.

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Originally Posted by Shollin

You still have to do a Michigan left when you get to Woodward.

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No stop light at Strathcona and Woodward.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

I can't imagine any road in Palmer Woods being a 'speedway from Woodward to Seven Mile'.

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As a resident of Palmer Woods I can assure you there were speedways in our neighborhood. It was not uncommon for vehicles to fly down Strathcona at 50mph and never stop at any of the stop signs. This is not a safe situation for any of the pedestrians whether they are residents of the neighborhood or not.
Similarly, Lincolnshire was commonly used to avoid the light on 7 mile and like Strathcona, high speeds were seen and traffic signs ignored.

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Originally Posted by Shollin

Got to love how when Palmer Woods does it, it is because of traffic but when Harper Woods or Grosse Pointe propose it, it's racism.

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BINGO point I was trying to make! There seems to be a lot of posters here who know a lot about speeding through neighborhoods. You should be ashamed of yourselves!

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Originally Posted by Bham1982

The "traffic calming" BS is probably just a cover to discourage people from entering the Palmer Woods neighborhood. There's no direct road anywhere through Palmer Woods.

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I think this is a sinister plot by Bennie Napolean to discredit Mike Duggan, by making it look like he is putting up baracades to keep native Detroiters from entering the area, now that he's recently purchased a home there, and to put himself over the top, for the up coming Mayoral race.

Now the residents of University District need to get together to close off Parkside as the speedway from 7 Mile to McNichols. People actually try to pass me on that street, I've got a bigger vehicle, so I just hog the road.

What needs to actually happen is to set up traffic cops.

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Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner

BINGO point I was trying to make! There seems to be a lot of posters here who know a lot about speeding through neighborhoods. You should be ashamed of yourselves!

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Yeah, the people who actually live there don't know what they're talking about.

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Originally Posted by Hamtragedy

Now the residents of University District need to get together to close off Parkside as the speedway from 7 Mile to McNichols. People actually try to pass me on that street, I've got a bigger vehicle, so I just hog the road.

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The problem is if you blocked off Parkside, people would just use one of the other parallel streets, down which people often go rather quickly.

What would obviously work would be to cut off access except from Livernois, since that would make passing-through pointless. That would be pretty irritating though. It would have been less irritating prior to the median being installed.

What I thought would be interesting to try would be to partially block some of the internal intersections so drivers would have to turn at some point in their traversal of the neighborhood. If you had to make several 90-degree turns to get all the way across, it might make it less attractive as a pathway, and it would certainly slow people down. I don't know whether that would mess up delivery vehicles too much.

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, the people who actually live there don't know what they're talking about.

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What I meant by being ashamed was those who advertise it as a speedway and or short cut [[and those who use it as one as well).

The fact is that this sort of stuff happens outside of Palmer Woods too but most don't have the same political clout to get anything done about it.

What is the saddest part of this thread is that a better police presence would deter this sort of behavior but the city is pretty well strapped and can't afford to have traffic cops like they once had.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

The problem is if you blocked off Parkside, people would just use one of the other parallel streets, down which people often go rather quickly.

What would obviously work would be to cut off access except from Livernois, since that would make passing-through pointless. That would be pretty irritating though. It would have been less irritating prior to the median being installed.

What I thought would be interesting to try would be to partially block some of the internal intersections so drivers would have to turn at some point in their traversal of the neighborhood. If you had to make several 90-degree turns to get all the way across, it might make it less attractive as a pathway, and it would certainly slow people down. I don't know whether that would mess up delivery vehicles too much.

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Good idea and also add speed bumps.

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Originally Posted by mwilbert

The problem is if you blocked off Parkside, people would just use one of the other parallel streets, down which people often go rather quickly.

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I'm no urban planner, but it makes me wonder, are grid streets really a good idea for residential areas?

Here in EEV we have speeders going north/south and criminals have an easy escape route west into Morningside.

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, the people who actually live there don't know what they're talking about.

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Exactly. The worst is the out-of-staters who come on here and act like they know what's going on in Detroit.

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Originally Posted by Det_ard

Exactly. The worst is the out-of-staters who come on here and act like they know what's going on in Detroit.

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What about the ones from out of state who visit the city of Detroit more times per year than the average suburbanite?

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, the people who actually live there don't know what they're talking about.

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Kind of ironic since Detroiters call Grosse Pointers racist for proposing closing streets. This has been discussed for at least 10 years in Harper Woods about blocking residential streets from Beaconsfield and Harper. The theory was to prevent crime. Blocking off Harper would block easy access to 94 for the criminals but there's a lot of small businesses on Harper that said they would suffer. It ended up going nowhere. During the town hall meetings Palmer Woods was one of the areas cited who were trying to implement this plan to reduce crime.

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Originally Posted by Shollin

Kind of ironic since Detroiters call Grosse Pointers racist for proposing closing streets. This has been discussed for at least 10 years in Harper Woods about blocking residential streets from Beaconsfield and Harper. The theory was to prevent crime. Blocking off Harper would block easy access to 94 for the criminals but there's a lot of small businesses on Harper that said they would suffer. It ended up going nowhere. During the town hall meetings Palmer Woods was one of the areas cited who were trying to implement this plan to reduce crime.

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You don't see the difference between blocking off a secondary roadway and blocking a side street? Or am I not interpreting you correctly?

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Originally Posted by iheartthed

You don't see the difference between blocking off a secondary roadway and blocking a side street? Or am I not interpreting you correctly?

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I'm not talking about blocking Harper or Beaconsfield. I'm talking about blocking side streets from Harper and Beaconsfield.

BTW, they also did do this in Harper Woods. if you go down Beaconsfield from Vernier you'll notice the first handful of blocks by Eastland are Cul-de-sacs. The city proposed doing that all the way down to Kingsville and all along Harper. Basically there would be only one or 2 access streets from Beaconsfield. East of Beaconsfield towards Kelly they just didn't care about anymore.

iheartthed I agree with you about closing Kercheval. Although many GP residents would consider Kercheval as a side street. The rest of the closures along Alter were all side streets yet GP has been called racist for closing them. Absolutely no difference between the streets closed along Alter and the streets that are being closed in PW. Personally I think PW should have blocked the streets decades ago.

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Originally Posted by Hamtragedy

Now the residents of University District need to get together to close off Parkside as the speedway from 7 Mile to McNichols. People actually try to pass me on that street, I've got a bigger vehicle, so I just hog the road.

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haha...i was likely the one tailgating. lots of udm commuters use parkside to get from mcnichols to 7 mile then down to 75 north.:cool:

It's all about reducing crime. More Detroit neighborhoods should limit access. When crime goes down, property values go up. And they should install speed bumps.

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Originally Posted by XDetroitr

It's all about reducing crime. More Detroit neighborhoods should limit access. When crime goes down, property values go up. And they should install speed bumps.

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I don't think you'll find too much disagreement on this, but then what was the point of living in Detroit in the first place?

How is Palmer Woods different from the Pointes? In both places you have rich folks trying to keep out poor folks, because they [[are at least perceived to) threaten their safety and assets.

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Originally Posted by Bham1982

I don't think you'll find too much disagreement on this, but then what was the point of living in Detroit in the first place?

How is Palmer Woods different from the Pointes? In both places you have rich folks trying to keep out poor folks, because they [[are at least perceived to) threaten their safety and assets.

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Well, it sounds as if the neighborhoods are devising ways to make cutting through them unattractive. Not bad. I wonder how it's being funded, but ...

... maybe now the residents of Palmer Park, Palmer Woods and Greenacres will be willing to re-examine their support for the monstrous bridge-underpass at Eight and Woodward?

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Originally Posted by XDetroitr

It's all about reducing crime. More Detroit neighborhoods should limit access. When crime goes down, property values go up. And they should install speed bumps.

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I think I have to disagree. It is about traffic. But, I agree with you about speed bumps. I live in Rosedale Park, and I just met with my county commissioner last week about planning traffic calming on Fenkell. I'm not anti-car [[I own two) but I'm pro-safety and pro-walkability. I've done a lot of research over the last year on walkability, complete streets, and traffic calming. More and more people look at these ideas as being really essential for quality of life. When you look at suburban developments over the last 30 years, one of the top selling points is the cul-de-sac, and that is just a method of controlling car traffic. Yes, it destroys the street grid, and whether the cul-de-sac is the best answer is a question for a different discussion. But traffic calming DOES work in other places. It pushes the impatient driver to main roads or freeways, slows traffic, and reduces noise and danger. I'm all for it, and I'm planning to work to see it become the standard in Detroit, even on main roads. [[Let's see... it took them four years in Palmer Woods... okay.)

http://trafficcalming.org/

The only problem with speed bumps is if they do any kind of snow plowing in your neighborhood, it really wreaks havoc with the snow plows.