It appears that traffic calming done in band-aid fashion puts us all at some level of risk. Traffic calming done as part of a larger plan to develop new infrastructure while maintaining existing infrastructure, identify key neighborhoods, and blend the concerns that exist throughout the community into appropriate solutions is the only way to proceed. None of us will get all we want, and some things have to take priority. The impact of traffic calming measures on the safety of the general public must be the first consideration. The Fire Department and other public safety agencies must be involved in the process.
Traffic calming is preferable to traffic diversion.
Traffic Diverters at South, Wood, and Fair Streets Resource constraints prevent us from performing the exhaustive analysis required to develop totally objective findings regarding the impact of traffic diverters. However, during the trial period, we have gathered field information as the result of working around the barriers for the past four months to use in evaluating their impact. That said, the traffic diverters at South, Wood, and Fair Streets create three significant problems for the Ithaca Fire Department. The first is that the closest fire hydrant to the block of South Street between Fair and Meadow is on the southeast corner of the intersection at South and Fair. Between that hydrant and the route of travel for fire trucks attempting to establish a water supply for any fire in that block is a traffic diverter.