The Collector Road

One of the scourges we're subjected to in the age of sprawl is the lack of a road grid or, indeed, any planning for such.

In Franklin, the old mile-square platting remains intact; for example, heading south to north there is a major east-west road every mile. And NOTHING in between besides meandering roads that head into subdivisions.

These busy roads are called COLLECTORS, and they're one of the ugly manifestations of automobile-centric suburbs. Because communities like Franklin are created by developers who buy patches of land as they become available (a farmer sells, for instance) with no accounting for proximity to existing neighborhoods and services, they create their own wiggly roads within developments and subdivisions. For some reason, there's no city planning provision - - a COMPREHENSIVE MASTER PLAN - -  to ensure an open path between the major collector roads so intermitent north-south streets can be added at, for instance, quarter-mile intervals.

In the picture below (courtesy of GOOGLE EARTH), the busy COLLECTOR ROADS are red and blue. Note the developments inside the square.

There is no provision at all for traffic-relieving "grid roads" between the "East-West A" and "East West B" like this:

See how the developers built houses in a pattern with no relationship to the existing grid? You would have to buy and tear down dozens of new houses to get through the block.

Why is this a problem? Because access to the highway and everything commercial (big box stores, Starbucks, etc.) for the many new subdivisions sprouting up are all to the west on "North-South B", or 27th street, and "North-South A." As more and more housing subdivisions are built, all of the traffic has but one route per mile to get to the things people need. These collector roads were not built with that volume in mind, and the insane roadwork created by subdivision developers between the collector roads makes relief via "grid roads" impossible. Now there is no solution.

Why were these developers allowed to build houses and roads in such a haphazard manner? Why weren't they made to obey a superimposed gridwork like the one above so narrow grid roads could be built in the future to relieve the collector roads?

One mile south of the above map is another east-west collector road (one per mile, remember?); it's currently being WIDENED.

What a sorrowful "solution."

Comments

[Geoff DeOld]

To look at this idea further, check out "Ladders" by Albert Pope.