Stop Chicken Little: The Truth about Traffic Calming in Portland, Maine |
![]() ![]() Medians: Vannah Baxter ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Medians: Vannah Avenue and Baxter Boulevard Vannah Avenue is a nice street with quite a bit of traffic at its East end, the confluence of Vannah, Woodfords Avenue, and Clifton Street. It finally got bad enough about 2004 to put in a signal light, and shortly after that a median! The median is supposedly a "pedestrian refuge", but seeing that it gets hit all the time, I question the value of that. Its problem is that it sticks out into the turning area if you are heading outbound to I-295. During the winter you can't see it at all. What bothers me is all the damage to the median. That means that there is damage done to any car that hits it, so there are people driving around with damage of one sort or another to their underbody, suspensions, steering systems, etc. : Tens of thousands of dollars worth over the years.......for nothing. Not to mention that a damaged part might break someday and cause an accident. This is dangerous and stupid. In the pictures below, notice the scraping on top of the median. Every new scrape is new damage to somebody's car. Notice the skid marks around the median, and up the sides. As you can see in the 6th picture below, there just is not enough room for almost any size car to maneuver around the median. Notice the damage to the tape on the stanchion - it's slowly torn off, as drivers run over it. Enough of this - it's just hit, hit, hit. I have hundreds more examples of these, all depressingly the same. It makes one wonder what these things are really supposed to be doing. Increasing safety is not it, for sure. SO, Next to Dartmouth Street to Woodfords Median Back to top |