Brickbat: Road Hard

Oakland residents, fed up with dangerous late-night sideshows where cars do stunts, built their own speed bumps on East 21st Street and 19th Avenue after the city ignored four years of pleas for help. Costing $3,000, these homemade speed bumps stopped the sideshows for eight months, but the city's Department of Transportation removed them for lacking official approval, angering locals who say the city doesn't care about their safety. Previously, the city also removed tire barriers that residents set up to deter sideshows, and though officials say they're working on traffic-calming solutions, residents argue the city's slow response has allowed the dangerous stunts to return, leaving the community frustrated and unsafe.
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From the linked article: “Andemeskel said the city’s DOT director verbally approved the DIY project last year.”
I can easily imagine how that went. Some seasoned bureaucrat knew how to say what they wanted to hear without actually saying what they think he said. My limited experience with planning bureaucrats has not led me to trust the breed.
Yep. Never trust anything unless it’s written down. They lie about this verbal stuff all the freaking time as I know from experience dealing with various governmental agencies.
I like that they had time and budget to remove the speed bumps, but not to install them.
It took 8 months of planning to remove them. Think how much planning installation would take.
Thinking you would also need a consulting firm to complete an environmental impact study, and then have sufficient time to study it…
Government is, first and last, a monopoly; and they guard that carefully.
A few years ago we had a heavy snow. The City was taking forever to clear the streets. Their excuse was a lack of manpower. A guy who owned an excavation company had his equipment operators clear the streets around his shop. The City issued a warning that if he did it again, he would be fined. It turned out that the City Street Department’s Union made the complaint because of the loss of overtime.
Public employee unions should be outlawed.
The bureaucracy is a jealous god.
This is the opposite of the story about the old lady who installed a DIY stop sign.
A road crew came through, saw that it was improperly installed, and replaced it with a proper one.
So they both put them up and took then down. There’s their own testimony against them. Either they shirked due diligence first time or were cowards the second time.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
(or just leave California)
Union workers, at their finest.
Bit if the local government put up these barriers in the name of safety would you be taking the side of the sideshow participants and the attempt to limit their activities?
I suppose the libertarian position would be “no blood, no foul”.
Government *doesn’t* care about ‘safety’ – they care about obedience.
How can the backwards, bigotted hicks of [glances at article] Oakland not recognize the economic and cultural enrichment opportunities that these ethnic, diverse, dangerous stunt side shows represent?
Really, if they don’t appreciate cross cultural wreckless driving and similar traditions like the lighting of the dumpsters broadening the horizons of their communities, they shouldn’t be there.
Wreckless driving is good. Reckless driving is bad.
There are reasons why I choose to live in the woods.
Most things hereabouts can be solved with the “3 S” rule:
Shoot
Shovel
Shut Up
Caltrops.