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North Buckhead Newsletter

July 2004

Traffic is one of those necessary evils we must endure as a price to be paid for enjoying the conveniences of living in a metropolitan community.  The sheer volume of traffic we deal with every day is a result of the area's density and our neighborhood's location.  Everyone wants to be as close as possible to all the pleasures and conveniences of our lifestyle.  They want to be close to work, as well.   

Every other month, a small group of residents representing NBCA's Traffic Committee meets.  We discuss and prioritize the various issues ranging from concerns over the behavior of traffic (speeding, improper road usage, etc.) to repairs (confusing or missing signage, etc.) to other  unsafe conditions (overgrown and impeding brush, etc.).  In addition, we try anticipate future trends and how best to plan for them.

Our objective is to ensure that the streets within our neighborhoods remain that -- neighborhood

streets.  Our bias is towards safety, access, and enjoyment.  We believe that homeowners should be able to pull into and back out of our driveways without being broadsided.  Neighbors should feel safe about crossing the street, walking on sidewalks, or riding a bike a few blocks. 

While we want safe neighborhood streets, more and more it is clear that others don't.  Drivers use our streets as a cut-through in order to avoid the horrible traffic jams at the major office complexes and intersections at rush hour.  Many of these cut-through commuters seem to have a intrinsic disregard for the safety of the families living on our streets.  They show their disregard by speeding, rolling through stop signs, and ignoring "children at play" signs and elementary school zone signs.  We frequently bring examples of this kind of disregard for neighborhood safety to the attention of the city, in hopes that the laws will be enforced and that unsafe conditions will be corrected. 

It is important to recognize who we are not.  We