Virginia’s horse country communities on Route 50 have been concerned because the increasingly busy highway is the main street of their towns.
To maintain (or reclaim) a sense of being a community rather than a pit stop, they have adopted the strategy of traffic calming. This approach encourages drivers to slow down and drive in a manner more appropriate to a community than a highway.
Some traffic calming tactics are shown in these photos from the towns of Upperville and Aldie, Virginia.
The top photo shows paving stone warning strips placed on approaches to the towns. (I know they’re hard to see, but they’re out there, just before and after the car.) These strips cause tires to rumble when they’re crossed, to alert drivers that something different is coming up.
This photo shows a landscaped median. It’s intended to block sight lines and force drivers to make a slight sideways movement, causing them to slow down.
This photo shows paving stones used at an intersection in one of the towns. The main road in the photo is Route 50, and the change in pavement is intended to encourage drivers to slow down, both visually and by the sound tires make driving over it.
These ideas and others have been in place for several years. Are they effective? I don’t know what the research says, but they work on me.
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Photos by the author.