Members of the Greenbriar neighborhood in Chantilly would like to strike a sensible balance between the rights of drivers and pedestrians. The community gets a lot of cut-through traffic, but, as the Fairfax Times puts it, “The use of random, time-consuming, and expensive traffic calming measures on a case-by-case basis is only a Band-Aid to a serious wound in Virginia’s current approach to resolving residential neighborhood traffic problems.”
Robert Mason, a member of the neighborhood’s traffic calming committee, has asked Del. Chuck Caputo, D-Chantilly, to introduce legislation developing Home Zones in Virginia. The idea comes from zones in European countries for streets shared equally between pedestrians and motorists. Caputo says he has asked the General Assembly staff for recommendations that can be introdued as legislation.
From the Home Zones website in the UK:
Home Zones work through the physical alteration of streets and roads in an area. These alterations force motorists to drive with greater care and at lower speeds. Many countries support this with legislation allowing the Home Zones to enforce a reduced speed limit of 10 miles an hour. The benches, flower beds, play areas, lamp posts, fences and trees used to alter the streets and roads offer many additional community benefits to the Home Zones and are considered to enhance the beauty of an area and increase the housing prices.
Home Zones, while on the surface offer substantial benefits to an area, are the source of some controversy. It has been reported that such schemes have delayed the response rates of the emergency services to the streets within the Zone. Other reports describe local authorities being inundated with complaints from residents demanding that the road humps and chicanes be removed as they are causing huge tailbacks through the streets. People have shown concern that encouraging children to play in roads, even specially adapted roads such as Home Zones, has introduced a danger which was not previously there. It has also been reported that the residents of a home zone in America are actively campaigning to have the road alterations removed as they can no longer park near their houses.
(Credit for photo of a Danish home zone: Picasa.com)
