Traffic calming is the practice of purposefully throwing a myriad of obstacles in the way to slow down traffic. In some cities, right-turn lanes are being removed, while left-turn lanes are filled with concrete barriers. Other strategies include narrowing of lanes on busy streets, allowing cars to park on streets, adding bike lanes and pedestrian paths that actually endanger our lives, using roundabouts, adding chicanes, medians, speed bumps and many more, all of which are in our Draft Comprehensive Plan (Strategy 5.01 E (8)).
Smart Growth is a title given to strategies supposedly intended to improve urban livability. These include efforts to increase population density in urban areas and concurrently reduce the population in rural land. This is referred to as “anti-sprawl.” This includes 50% of all the land and waterways in the United States, that have been designated to be set aside by conservationists for the “rewilding” of America. According to Dr. Michael Coffman, Ph.D., “Smart growth advocates seek to preserve land in a natural or agricultural state by encouraging individuals to live in denser communities that take up smaller tracts of land per housing unit. Such communities also encourage residents to rely more on walking (biking-my addition) or public transit than on cars for mobility, and they more closely mix retail and other commercial facilities with residential units to foster easy access to jobs and shopping.”
These strategies are contained in the 2040 Draft Plan in Chapters 1 and 5.
Chapter 1, Goal 1.10 Urban Sprawl, discourages single-family home development, urban development in rural areas, instead encouraging islands of habitation where all services are provided in a mixed-use neighborhood with mass transit services, bicycle and pedestrian paths, discouraging the use of single automobiles. This plan also discourages use of land in “Ecological Linkage” areas. Chapter 5 is a 14-page chapter on transportation. In that short space, “bicycle” is mentioned 18 times, and “pedestrian” 19 times. We believe it most assuredly fits the definition of a “smart growth” plan.
Another way to look at this rearrangement of our lives, is as social engineering. It attempts to force us to live in conditions we might not otherwise have chosen by strategies and tactics, rules, regulations, planning and zoning, with laws that undermine our private property rights, our pursuit of happiness, and the American Dream. Less than 25% of American families choose to live in cities. The rest of us have chosen a single-family, suburban or rural home that fits our idea of the American Dream. What entities would want to force us into inner city high rises, giving up our individual transportation freedoms, and why? We’ll explore some possible reasons in the commentary to follow.
Where did smart growth strategies originate? We’ve had proponents in the United States since at least the ‘70s. Globally, the United Nations has pursued many programs to control global land use. They have encouraged socialistic attitudes which oppose private property rights. The United Nations speaks of land being used in the interests of society as a whole, encouraging public control of land use. They advocate for extensive planning and zoning, as a way to gain control through rules, regulations and ordinances. The U.N. strongly encourages smart growth strategies, by implementing them through local government (see chapters 7, 15 and 28 in the United Nations Agenda for the Twenty-first Century). Whether our local government officials are aware of it or not, our Comprehensive Plan, current and 2040 Draft carry out similar goals.
Dr. Coffman addresses planners in his article entitled “The Smart Growth Fraud.”
“Land-use control can often become an obsession to planners for obvious reasons. In order to plan and control growth in their enlightened way, government bureaucrats and planning advocates must control property rights. Private property rights and smart growth are therefore mutually exclusive.” Let’s let that sink in for a minute. “Private property rights and smart growth are therefore mutually exclusive.” These are profound words. This tells us that our Comprehensive Plan for Hernando County is violating our private property rights.
Then why are we following such nefarious plans that have been proven to fail? When challenged, our planning department has responded that the State of Florida requires them to do this. While there are some requirements in the State Statutes for Comprehensive Planning (S.S. 163.3177) there are also many choices concerning content as well as opportunities to mitigate the damaging policies. The State does not require Hernando County to use strategies with shalls, wills and musts. The County is allowed to leave our document as policies of choice with should, may, encourage and similar language. The County has choices in the urban sprawl category also, by engaging in only four of a list of eight policies. Our planning department supported most all of them. We believe our department bent over backwards to accommodate the smart growth strategies. As far as transportation requirements, the State Statutes on Metropolitan Planning Organizations for the State of Florida, state that the MPOs are to conform to local Comprehensive Plans, not the other way around.
Interesting details from “The Folly of Smart Growth” help to explain the process:
“Regional governments: To the disappointment of smart growth proponents, many locally elected officials are unwilling to enact smart growth policies for fear of the wrath of voters in subsequent elections.”
Douglas Porter of the Urban Land Institute (a staunch supporter of smart growth) and other supporters, have developed a way around the problem: “endowing regional governments with the powers to require plans to conform to regional or state goals.” In this way, local officials can take controversial stands, blaming state or federal sources for their actions.
These regional governments were first created in the 1960s originally to help take applications for, and to distribute federal funds. Instead, they have become a convenient scapegoat for local government to institute smart growth strategies without having to accept the responsibility. Our Hernando County Planning Department claims that much of the 2040 plan is required by the State, such as “Complete Streets” and “traffic calming.” We respectfully disagree. Remarkably, Governor Rick Scott signed a bill in 2011, to repeal a 25-year old smart growth law in Florida. Why are we still pushing failed policies?
Our county needs to do what is right for all its citizens. If our Founding Fathers had continued to do only as they were told, we’d still be British citizens today. Here is a case in point from our history:
It’s 1761. The colonies were still reeling from the French and Indian War of 1754; in a deep economic depression, with very high unemployment. James Otis, one of the colony’s brightest young legal minds, had acquired one of the highest positions possible as the King’s Advocate General of the Vice-Admiralty Court at Boston. He was required to enforce Writs of Assistance, without warrants, which amounted to illegal search and seizure under British law. His conscience would not let him continue. He quit his job in objection to the policies and became an outspoken patriot for independence. He’s best known for coining the phrase “No taxation without representation.” Here is an example of conscience and true moral fiber. Common sense dictates that we should not continue to follow failed policies that defy logic and violate our personal private property rights.
Most citizens become wrathful with their elected officials, when it comes to curtailing their driving freedoms. We belong to the National Motorists Association (NMA) whose leadership fiercely advocates for our personal driving freedoms. There is no other form of transportation that allows for the degree of personal choice afforded us by our own cars. They have written many articles against tactics and strategies designed to make us give up driving. These include, “traffic calming”, and “complete streets” strategies. Our comprehensive plan, current and Draft 2040 adhere to these strategies.
Traffic calming is the practice of purposefully throwing a myriad of obstacles in the way to slow down traffic. In some cities, right-turn lanes are being removed, while left-turn lanes are filled with concrete barriers. Other strategies include narrowing of lanes on busy streets, allowing cars to park on streets, adding bike lanes and pedestrian paths that actually endanger our lives, using roundabouts, adding chicanes, medians, speed bumps and many more, all of which are in our Draft Comprehensive Plan (Strategy 5.01 E (8)). Naturally, timed traffic lights that actually enhance the flow of traffic are completely defeated by traffic calming strategies.
Chapter 1 of the Draft Plan Strategy 1.04 G (25) calls for traffic calming for South Brooksville.
Strategy 1.05 B (1) calls for traffic calming in the Spring Hill Drive Corridor.
Strategy 1.05 D (2) calls for these techniques at Northcliffe and Mariner including street-parking opportunities.
The Kass Circle CRA project also calls for the same techniques.
The ultimate reason is to give us a disgust for driving, making it a slow and miserable experience so that we will turn to bikes, our own foot power or mass transit.
Portland Oregon and other large cities have tried these strategies for decades spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money with little or no results. More people still choose the personal freedom of driving. We can’t imagine any resident or visitor of Hernando County actually asking elected representatives to please slow traffic down, ensure gridlock, making our commute more miserable. This is the height of hypocrisy in government.
The “Complete Streets” program is a plan to include most every form of transportation in the same highway. This is where you notice that narrow bicycle lanes have been jammed between car lanes and car lanes have been narrowed to make room for the additions.
Buildings are moved to the edge of the curb and cars are parked along the streets. In an article from the NMA, “The Dangers of Remaking the Landscape: Why the NMA is so concerned about Vision Zero, Complete Streets and Smart Growth,” they remark that:
“Vision Zero and the related movements of Complete Streets and Smart Growth seek to fundamentally reengineer the landscape and change how we live, work and travel. In our opinion, there is no greater threat to our driving freedoms.” They talk about the impact of complete streets, with “narrower travel lanes, more bike lanes, road diets, curb extensions, traffic calming… the list goes on.”
“Purveyors of Complete Streets are careful to pay lip service to the needs of motorists, but in reality, their interventions are designed to make driving expensive, inconvenient and ultimately socially unacceptable.” Is this what we want for our county highways? The only humans we can imagine advocating for this would be those who think they might gain financially from the situation.
Just how smart is smart growth? If you look at communities that have used the strategies since the 1970’s, it’s an abysmal failure. For real estate agents and land developers looking at these policies, land restrictions increased the cost of land drastically both in urban and rural locations, decreasing sales, and even making Oregon one of the hardest hit in the recent housing bubble. Housing affordability dropped 56%; the largest reduction of any major urban area in the United States. There are free-market solutions to all these problems, that still respect private property rights. We believe in government by consent and not by force.
Many communities that have tried these strategies, thought to avoid the problems of urban living. Instead, they have only become worse. Jamming more human beings into a small space only increases pollution, spread of disease, traffic congestion and crime. It intensifies the miseries of humanity.
The U.S. Bureau of Census classifies less than 5% of the U.S. as being developed. Only 2.5% is urban. Even New York and Pennsylvania are only 10% developed. We are not running out of land. Why then are we being encouraged if not forced by regulations, to leave the land, and move into islands of mixed use habitation?
We don’t know the answers to this question but can only surmise that it probably falls somewhere within the realms of power, money, idealism and fanatical control. To make mass transit, especially light rail cost effective, people need to reside near depots, where they would have given up their cars, and be nicely rounded-up for pick-up from their islands of habitation. There is huge profit in light rail for suppliers. From “The Folly of Smart Growth”, they tell us that:
“A typical light-rail line costs as much to build as a four-lane freeway, yet no light rail in the nation carries half as many people as a single lane of a typical urban freeway.” “They (planners) believed that higher densities along the light rail would promote light-rail ridership. However, time has shown that few people want to live in such high-density communities and few developers want to construct them, even if there is convenient access to mass transit.”
So far it hasn’t worked in the communities that have tried these strategies across the United States. Some might also believe that there’s money to be made in the retail centers and mixed use neighborhoods. That hasn’t happened either. Still certain industries may have other uses for the rural lands, including more acres to grow pine trees for the lumber and paper pulp industries. Some environmentalists have idealistic goals to preserve wildlife. It may be the globalist plans by the United Nations for a one world government. Maybe it’s all of them, a combination or none of them. What is for sure, is that none of these groups have the right to violate our private property rights, but they will if we continue to let them. None of these groups should be able to violate our natural god-given inalienable rights, but they will if we stay silent and do nothing. Now is the time to take a stand and no better place than in our own county with our own comprehensive plan. Don’t let them decide where and how you will live!
On May 2nd (tentative date), there is to be a county workshop on this new Draft 2040 Comprehensive Plan. This would be a good time to show up at the County Commission chambers, to support County Commissioners who have concerns about this plan. If they don’t hear from you, they will assume all is well. If you can’t come, send an e-mail or make a phone call. There will be plenty of representation from special interest groups, but our commissioners need to hear from the average citizen who pays taxes, works hard, enjoys living the American Dream in Hernando County, and would like to continue that for themselves and their children and grandchildren.