There is a 3-way intersection near my house that has only one stop sign.  The Mead cul-de-sac that runs off of Spooner Crescent.  To me the logical place for the stop sign would be from Mead to Spooner.  The city of Cambridge thinks differently.   The City has the stop sign on Spooner Crescent where it meets Mead Court.   This means that there is a stop sign in the middle of the crescent.  That doesn’t make sense to me.

I did some research on stop signs and it turns out they are not good for the environment.  Politicians like to install stop signs as part of traffic calming measures but stop signs are not an effective traffic calming technique.   Drivers tend to exceed posted speed limits between known stop signs.  Myths 2 & 3 in this Ohio Department of Transportation PDF  highlight stop sign issues.

The City of Charlottetown is looking at removing some stop signs.  The City discovered that some stop signs were placed at the request of politicians and not because they were needed.   The town of Uxbridge is looking at reducing the number of stop signs for environmental reasons.

I’ve been in touch with the people at the City of Cambridge responsible for these kinds of things.  They are going to review the situation.  I doubt I’ll hear back from them but you never know.  I’ll post an update if I do hear back.