I have the ITE “Context Sensitive…” guide in my reference collection – many others too. ITE is a great source for material, but their stuff sure is pricey. I get really good results by reading and asking questions on some of the transportation listservs I’m on.

As far as working with the County, all city residents in DeKalb pay taxes to the County for roads, water, and sewer. The City does not have access to any traffic signal boxes in the city limits – all signal timing changes, broken pedestrian buttons, burnt out bulbs, you name it, have to be requested from the County and the City is dependent on DeKalb’s schedule to get the work done. I will say we have good relations with the Roads & Drainage folks and most things work pretty smoothly as far as water and sewer goes.

The cities in DeKalb County have refused to sign a new Service Delivery Agreement – which is required by the state to allow the County to collect these taxes from city residents to perform these services. We keep extending the old agreement because the County cannot break out how the cities’ tax payments are being spent. The cities believe we are overpaying, the County disagrees, yet they can’t tell us where the tax money goes. Imagine if you went to City Hall and the staff couldn’t break out where your tax money went.

Gwinnett County and its cities are having a big battle over the same issue and the courts are now involved. Gwinnett hasn’t even been able to send out its first tax bill for this year. They are in a major mess, but luckily DeKalb hasn’t gotten to that point. We’re still agreeing to disagree.

The most important thing about it is that, if you cite it, status-quo DOT engineers will listen. That, in and of itself, is monumental.

Fred, how locked in is the City to those people? Could we fire them and contract the work out to someone who knows what they’re doing?

I study all these different traffic calming designs. Folks send me links about them from all over the place and I surely wish we could try some of them. Unfortunately, there are two publications considered the bibles of transportation – the “Green Book” and the MUTCD.

The Green Book is the design guidebook for traffic engineers – and nearly 100% of the time – “if it ain’t in the Green Book, it ain’t going to get built that way”. Last updated in 2005, the current revision is in the works and pedestrian/bicycle facility design engineers are trying really hard to get the new version to reflect more design options like the “zig-zag”. I know a number of folks involved in that effort and it’s a hard go – engineers are a conservative lot and there’s a good deal of “but we’ve always done it this way”

The MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices) covers every road sign & signal used in the USA. It also covers where to place them and what “warrants” their need. I think it was last updated in 2003. Again – “if it ain’t in the MUTCD, we’re not going to put it up” And again, I know a number of folks trying to get updated information in the current revision. Two good examples are the green bike boxes that Roswell recently installed and the “sharrows” that Athens has installed on some shared car/bike lanes. (A sharrow is an arrow with a bike symbol added to it painted along the edge of the street indicating to the cyclist where to ride and alerting drivers to share the road. Neither are “official” and I bet there is some question of liability, but both cities decided to use them. Decatur has sharrows listed in the Transportation Plan, but they aren’t “official” because they aren’t in the MUTCD.

If I haven’t put anyone to sleep yet – and you’ve made it this far – now you know why it is so hard to get the “okay” to try some of this stuff.

Any of this is better than those damn “bulb-outs” that they did here in Lake Claire, on McLendon Ave. For those of us who bike, those things are a disaster. I would much rather have seen zig zag lines and speedbump/crosswallks. (But I didn’t go to the meetings, so I guess I can’t complain!)