Driving us Crazy

Urban planners supported with taxpayer dollars are engaging in "planned congestion", driving us crazy at our expense. Rachel DiCarlo in the Weekly Standard:

Why create congestion? The goal is to make driving as undesirable as possible, thereby discouraging sprawl and encouraging people to live in high-density areas, where they will either ride mass transportation or walk. Since most cities have trouble filling seats on their money-losing transit systems, traffic calming is also another way to try to make these systems more financially justifiable.

While some of this stuff makes sense to discourage traffic in suburban side streets, those of us who drive, at least where I live, have sometimes wondered at the point of some of this busybody engineering. Now we know it is intentional:

The most common practice is signal disruption--which guarantees that a driver who is obeying the speed limit will have to stop at almost every red light.

And how about this gem, to which I can personally attest---allowing free parking in the "bike lanes". Perhaps they are losing sight of their goal.

Critics point out the impact on emergency vehicles and increased pollution, but throw in the existing train crossings at rush hour and a push for high-density development from their community development colleagues and these planners can really go to town!

Or not.