Alachua County’s autoAmerican Speedway

It was just another close call in autoAmerica.

It came and went so quickly there wasn’t even time for my life to flash before my eyes.

Leaving my Forest Ridge neighborhood I headed east on NW 16th Ave. I got into the left turn lane at 16th Terrace – which runs behind GHS – and waited for the oncoming traffic to subside before making my turn.

Just as the light turned yellow, the car on the inside lane immediately in front of me stopped. There was also a car coming on the outside lane, maybe a few hundred feet further back. But the light was about to turn red so I made my turn.

Unfortunately, the car in the outside lane didn’t even try to stop. It blew through the red light headed right at me.

I slammed on my brakes, but it wouldn’t have helped if the oncoming driver hadn’t yanked his steering wheel abruptly to the right.

Which cased him to miss me by inches but lose control of his car. Which jumped the curb, careened into the yard on the corner of 16th & 16th and come to a stop when it slammed into a parked car in the driveway.

I pulled over, jumped out and ran to see if I could help. The air bag pretty much concealed what was going on inside.

After a few tense moments, the passenger side door opened and the driver climbed out. He was a fairly young guy, maybe early 20s.

And almost the first thing he did after getting clear was apologize. It was his fault, he told me.

He wanted to know if I’d been hurt. I wanted to know if he had.

Soon the occupants of the house came out to survey the damage done to their parked car. Someone dialed 9-11 and Fire/Rescue showed up in very quick order.

Just another close call in autoAmerica. The kid was shaken up. I was shaken up. The occupants of the house were bewildered. Time to move on and shake it off.

But…

But then I noticed was that the yard was strewn with toys for small children – a tricycle, a pink Barbie-style electric car.

Had the kids been out playing in the yard at the moment, things might have turned out quite, tragically, differently.

Imagine small children playing “safely” in their yard every day – just feet away from a never ending procession of speeding cars.

But that’s the risk you take when you choose to live adjacent to NW 16th Ave/Blvd.

Or as I like to call it, Alachua County’s autoAmerican Speedway.

I recalled another incident at 16th and 16th just a few weeks earlier. I was on foot, crossing the street on the north side of 16th Ave when a car took a quick right turn onto 16th Terrace and missed me by inches.

It was a young woman, perhaps a GHS student, and she either hadn’t noticed me or just assumed she could safely edge by me without actually making contact.

Fortunately she just managed it. Thankfully sparing my toes.

And then I remembered yet another incident that occurred some months earlier, just 100 feet or so west of 16th & 16th.

There, a driver lost control of his vehicle. It had been raining. The vehicle lost traction and crashed headlong into the red brick wall separating 16th from Colony Park.

If the brick wall hadn’t stopped the truck the house situated just on the other side surely would have.

A year or two past I watched rescue workers employ the jaws of life, to free a driver whose car was smashed and overturned just outside the entrance to my Forest Ridge subdivision.

Not to forget the woman who was killed last year after bring struck – not by one car but by two – on NW 16th Ave. near 34th street.

And I still remember that day, many, many years ago, when a child riding his bike to school was killed on 16th near 34th St.

I still remember it because his mother was my kids’ kindergarten teacher.

I could go on. I have been driving, cycling and walking up and down 16th Ave for more than 30 years and have had ample opportunity to watch foolish or careless drivers treat 16th like the speedway it is designed to be.

And yes. It’s easy to blame a careless driver, an inattentive child, bad weather – or maybe just the fates – for any given, um, incident. (Personally, I have a problem describing a collision in which speed or careless driving played was involved, as an “accident.”)

Thanks Alachua County

So let’s be honest about this: Alachua County deserves a lion’s share of the culpability for the chaos and near misses that regularly occur on 16th Ave/Blvd.

Most of the other high-speed highways that cut through GNV like deadly knives – 34th and 43rd streets, 13th street, University Avenue and the like – are maintained by FDOT. And it’s clear that Florida’s transportation engineers always have, and likely always will, prioritize the fast and efficient movement of cars over the protection of pedestrians, cyclists, people waiting at transit stops and other unprotected human beings.

Yes, I know, FDOT finally got serious about slowing down cars on University Avenue…at least where it borders UF. But only after way too many student deaths and injuries resulted in a statewide public outcry.

But NW 16th Avenue/Blvd is different. Or at least it ought to be different.

It’s a county road, not a state road.

It should be a local street.

But it’s not.

It’s a county stroad.

As local themselves, county commissioners and their staff should be much more attuned to public safety issues than are the indifferent traffic engineers who get their marching orders from Tallahassee.

But they are not.

NW 16th – with its four overly broad travel lanes and line-of-sight-limiting hills – is essentially a high speed urban highway. And never mind that it intersects too many neighborhoods, parks, schools and churches to count.

The 40 mph speed limit signs are a joke. Although I would argue that even if the limit was strictly observed, 40 mph is way too fast for city driving.

But 16th is primarily designed to function as a suburban traffic funnel

Which is to say it is designed to help impatient people who live out in the hinterlands get as quickly as possible to their GNV jobs in the morning and then back home to the sanctuary of their cul de sac neighborhoods in the afternoon.

Everything about NW 16th Ave/Blvd is designed to facilitate speed. Even the broad, tree-lined medians that separate east and west traffic flow are there to keep motorists from involuntarily slowing down for fear of losing their rear view mirrors to oncoming cars.

Even the stretch of 16th that runs east of 13th St. – where traffic lanes are reduced from four to two – is a textbook example of a people-unfriendly street.

No bike lanes. Aging, narrow and poorly maintained sidewalks, riddled with curb cuts, that are all but impassable on garbage pickup day.

And two east-west travel lanes separated by a continuous left turn “suicide lane” that invites impatient motorists to co-opt as a passing lane when the guy ahead of them (like me) is driving too slow.

It may be the most bike-ped unfriendly street in GNV. If it were a city maintained street, it wouldn’t be tolerated. But it’s good enough for county work.

Listen, we can talk the livelong day about how to calm urban traffic. But when you come right down to it, the essence of traffic calming can be distilled into three simple words and an exclamation mark.

SLOW THE CARS!

There are maybe 101 ways to slow cars in an urban setting. Some more expensive than others – although none as expensive as building new and wider travel lanes to keep cars moving as fast as possible.

If you want to see a textbook example of urban traffic calming check out South Main Street. When FDOT controlled that corridor it was just another high-speed urban stroad. When the City took it over it slowed the cars using various complete street design features and – in the process – created a magnet destination for pedestrians, runners, cyclists and strollers.

I suppose it’s too much to ask the Alachua County Commission to presume to slow the cars on NW 16th – other than to post the usual ineffective speed limit signs and the occasional LED board alerting motorists when they are going to fast.

Still, every day when I venture out of my neighborhood onto NW 16th – on my bike, in my car or on foot – its very design says something fundamental to me about the indifference, even contempt, with which county government regards those of us who live in the City of GNV.

It may be the most visible “take that GNV!” example of a city/county political/bureaucratic rivalry that was being waged way before even I got here.