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Increasingly I'm seeing trucks and SUVs trying to just go over traffic diverters like the one above. Here the driver of a large truck has made tracks over the diverter at the intersection of Alberta Street, and West Broadway, as if it wasn't even there. One block west, on Columbia Street, there's a newer diverter, doing the same job, which I watched being given it's finishing touches a few months ago. So far it has survived unscathed.

The City of Vancouver has been incorporating traffic calming measures in it's neighbourhood street improvements for at least 30 years. By "traffic calming," I mean traffic circles (aka roundabouts), at neighbourhood intersections; speed bumps near schools, and traffic diverters of all shapes and sizes. The goal is to slow down, and control the flow of traffic, into, and through neighbourhoods, using street architecture rather than just stop signs, or traffic lights.

A viscous circle

Traffic circles, as I recall, first appeared in the West End in the 1980s. They have since spread to every neighbourhood. They're simple -- just a circular island in the center of an intersection -- governed by one main rule: Keep to the right. They slow traffic, and they can all but eliminate head-on, and T-bone collisions  I think they're life-savers. Often the center of the circle is planted with a small community garden, so they can be attractive to boot.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be working like they used to. Everywhere I encounter drivers at traffic circles who insist on turning left as if the circle wasn't there, when they are supposed to turn right, counter-clockwise around the circle. In May of this year, the city actually removed a traffic circle in Kitsilano because it was seen to be causing collisions between cars and bicycles. According to this CBC item, the circle at West 10th and Pine was removed, and replaced by two-way stop signs, after statistics showed it ranked in the top ten intersections for car-bike crashes.

Cyclists just add to the complexity of driving, Particularly when some of us ride as though we're above the rules of the road. Drivers who may feel they're being unfairly blocked by traffic calming measures from getting from A to B in a sensible straight line, at a sensible speed, may be that much more annoyed to see that every traffic diverter allows unrestricted two-way bicycle access. Nyah, nyah!

Too much of a good thing?

I'm seeing drivers exhibiting confusion, and impatience, with traffic circles, diverters, and four-way stops. I've watched a number of SUVs hit, and go up onto diverters, as if they didn't see them, and I regularly see commercial trucks go right over them.

Traffic diverters are popping up all over the west side neighbourhoods I frequent: Kitsilano, Fairview, and the western part of Mount Pleasant. The city can put one in place quite quickly, and, sometimes just as quickly, I've seen city workers rip out an existing diverter, and build a new one to a different design. I don't know how many diverters the city has built in the last two years, but it seems like a lot, And increasingly it seems to me that more diverters just means more opportunities for drivers to try and circumvent them, one way or the other.

I think this is firstly about having more motor vehicles on less road. Increased congestion on major arterial roads encourages traffic to use the alleys and side streets of adjacent residential neighbourhoods. This in turn leads the city to install layers of traffic calming measures to stop traffic from using neighbourhood streets as through roads. Keeping through traffic out of the neighbourhoods means keeping it on very congested main roads. If traffic volumes continue to increase, as it surely will, I've no idea what the city does. The main losers right now, may be commercial service, and delivery vehicles, as they have to share the lanes with regular car traffic trying to escape the crush on major streets like West Broadway -- an example being the alley on the south side of West Broadway, which offers an irresistible straight line, with no traffic lights, from Oak to Granville Street, as car drivers are figuring out.

Whether it's talking on their cell phones, or driving Parkour-style, whenever otherwise, law-abiding citizens are willing, en-mass to become scoflaws, it suggests an underlying problem. I think people are increasingly balking at having their prerogatives as drivers taken away, Drivers are certainly frustrated by a lot more than just bike lanes. Click the images to enlarge them, except the animation.

I believe my first landlord in Vancouver was one of the leading voices to convince the city of Vancouver to adopt traffic calming measures in the early 1980s, originally to stop drivers from using the West End as a high-speed thoroughfare. Her name was Carole Walker, She owned a three storey house full of bed-sit rooms in the West End. I rented one on the second floor. My second floor neighbour was a lad who was trying to start a grow-op on his windowsill. The third-floor tenant I remember was a young woman who quit her job each June, to spend her summers on Unemployment Insurance at the beach. Ah, the 1980s. I was a fresh-face, 18-year-old working at my first newspaper in Vancouver, The Westender. I understand Carole Walker is still very involved in holding the city's feet to the fire on development issues in the West End.

A hidden problem with traffic circles ►