Art to Slow Down Cars

Posted by Miss Cellania in Arts & Crafts, Car & Vehicle on September 27, 2008 at 8:52 pm


Sculptor Steven Woodward’s latest art project is a set of traffic signs, made from the same material as normal signs, but with pictures designed to slow traffic. Some feature pictures of people, others are based on cave art or animals, like the one pictured here. They were installed on Hamline and Thomas Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. Did they slow traffic?

“As I understand it, there was no change in traffic vehicular speeds whatsoever,” he said.

Traffic on Hamline didn’t change. With and without the signs, speeds were 33 miles per hour northbound and 34 miles per hour southbound. It was a similar story on Thomas Avenue. Eastbound speeds averaged 32 miles per hour with and without the signs. The westbound traffic slowed only slightly when the art signs were posted from 34 to 33 miles per hour.

However, traffic engineers did not take into account that the state fair was in full swing during the testing period. The signs will soon be moved to George Street for another go. Link -Thanks, panodk!

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COMMENT

8 comments to "Art to Slow Down Cars"

  1. Josh
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    I say it would make driving more dangerous. You are going to have more people looking at the signs rather than the road. One mistake can cause a death. Just like all the idiots who text, talk, read, etc while driving.

  2. nach
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    I was about to say something similar. Is slowing down the car or safety the endpoint? Sure, you may theoretically slow down someone, but that’s because they’re distracted trying to make sense of the sign.

  3. kelly
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    living in the minneapolis/st.paul area, i can affirm what any resident of the area will tell you. MN DOT traffic engineers are idiots. I seriously think you have to fail an IQ test to get a job there. Guessing this is a city engineer, but they’re probably the people that were too dumb even for MnDOT.

    an example… I-394 has a high occupancy lane east bound towards minneapolis. A sane person would assume as you get closer to the center of the metropolitan area, you would have more lanes as that would be where you would have greater concentration of traffic. Not in Minnesota. here the high occupancy lane just ends about 4 miles from downtown minneapolis, meaning people whizz by everyone else, and then are forced to merge in to a now reduced number of lanes, which creates a huge cluster%*&%. wasn’t a one time mistake either… they have similar contrictions all over the place. a 5 year old could engineer traffic flow better than these idiots.

  4. Sofar
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    Why would you want to slow down traffic?

  5. Miss Cellania
    September 27th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Um, to keep your children from being killed.

  6. Sofar
    September 28th, 2008 at 12:04 am

    Touché.

  7. Zack
    September 28th, 2008 at 5:35 am

    as a member of the dynamite museum I feel obligated to say that “we’ve already been there, and done that.”

  8. Miranda
    September 29th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    I think that after you see them say, two times, you are going to stop paying attention to them. Just like the speed limit signs… They are actually moving the sign some place else to see how it “works” there. Guess the only good thing is that it was paid for by7 grants and things like that..


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