I feel like there's a way to drag John Muir's racism against indigenous peoples into this.

On the same token, the folks who say they get tickets all the time when they go to the city are being whiny, demonstrably bad drivers. But for normies, they want to drive safely and the speed limit. A DOT shouldn't then encourage them to break the law with bad design.

The difference is that roads, in my mind, do communicate, sometimes in very obvious, "loud" ways, which I'd describe as yelling.

It is annoying when a city designs a system that says two contradictory things: speed, but don't speed. It's bad, unsafe, and makes people feel manipulated. And annoyed.

The psychology of roadway design is well documented. Wider lanes means people tend to go faster, for instance, while chicanes or vertical elements nearer the lanes do the opposite.

A road's speed and expectations should be self-enforcing and clear to the driver even if they missed the signs.

Also: these sorts of speed traps sour everyone on speed cameras so they can't be deployed like they should be, which is everywhere.

DC is particularly egregious, with some freeway-style roads having outrageously low limits, like 40mph on a 60mph design.

(And we all outsource our thinking, it's a necessary part of living in society.)

Not the first time this very specific critique has surfaced.

But the failure isn't idiocy; it's what happens when the people you outsource your thinking to are deliberately gaslighting you.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Well, yes. Shitty signalization practices are shitty.

But given that they generally look the same, one risks rewarding inaccessible design and punishing accessible design.

:( They really need to read my GGWash series on induced demand :(

Several schools see a majority of students walking and rolling.

It's clear what those schools have in common:
-Nearby relatively dense housing (9+ DU/acre)
-Adjacent protected bike infrastructure
-Very little parking/auto circulation

Ehhh... local engineers have a lot of freedom to apply those standards, and having a model at the state level will force the district offices and locals to adopt better practices.

No but really MDOT and VDOT both need to have an air-tight set of standards that relentlessly centers pedestrian and bicyclist safety and accessibility.

As long as there is a hint of an option it'll be taken.

Sustainable Safety is my newest standards toy. sustainablesafety.nl

STANDARDS STANDARDS STANDARDS STANDARDS

Ew.

I've got a blog post I'm drafting in my head about boulevards and retrofits. I'm mostly thinking about stroads like New Hampshire Ave or Rockville Pike, but this is a good example of another kind of retrofit: how to make a true through road work well for all users.

That's certainly what it looks like! Is the design being done by the county itself or by developers along its route? If the former, then it could be changed; if the latter, then it's probably way too late.

I don't think you can fix the intersection without fixing the roads, which would probably mean much better shared-use path designs and extreme traffic calming on both.

A signalized roundabout is my guessed-at interim solution here, but the main thing is taming the roads themselves.

It's too big because the roads are too big. That isn't the fault of the intersection design; it's the fault of the road designs it needs to accommodate. You have a 6-lane surface highway and 4-lane highway, with a design for Observation Dr intended for future extension.