Roads Can't Have Too Many Lanes

Do you remember that old cereal commercial, the one where a rabbit kept being foiled in its attempt to get a kid's Trix cereal, and the announcer kept reminding him, "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids." Well, in this analogy, the rabbit is a pedestrian, roads are Trix, and the kids are cars. I know, it's kind of a stretch, but bear with me.

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City Manager Don Magner set the stage at the December 11, 2023, Richardson City Council meeting by stating these objectives for Phase 2 of the reconstruction of Main Street in the Core District:

• Build on the pedestrian-friendly environment that we seek to facilitate in the downtown Core district
• Provide important access to our public safety campus

He showed no awareness that his solution for objective 2, improving car access, was counter to objective 1, pedestrian-friendliness. Of course, you can already guess that car access was going to be given priority over pedestrian friendliness. And that's just what he asked for from the City Council and what they obligingly gave him, no questions asked.

The street cross-section above was presented to the City Council. The current configuration of Main Street has four lanes and no median. The new Main Street will have five lanes and still no median. City staff can't imagine anything other than *more lanes* automatically meaning *improved*.

The City Council voted unanimously to begin the eminent domain process to condemn property along the frontage of two businesses on Main Street in order to widen Main Street and add a turn lane. To benefit cars. All as part of an effort "to build on the pedestrian-friendly environment that we seek." The Council spent no time deliberating this or giving explanations why each of them favored the hostile step of using eminent domain on business property.

Adding a lane will allow traffic to move faster through a bottleneck. That's good for cars. Faster traffic is not so good for pedestrians. Point out that obvious point to the City and you're likely to get some kind of response like, "Silly rabbit, roads are for cars."

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"Eminent domain
is Richardson's power trip
in service of cars."
—h/t ChatGPT