I live in Maryland. There is a street that cuts right through a neighborhood of townhouses in my neighborhood. In the morning, some people use that street to cut through the neighborhood to get to a major road, thus avoiding a few minutes of driving.
Recently, a sign has been posted that states you’re not allowed to drive on that street between the hours of 6am and 9am, unless you’re a resident living on that street. How is that legal? It seems unfeasiable that certain roads are “off-limits” at certain times just because people don’t enjoy all the thru traffic. If you don’t like it, don’t live there. A friend has seen a cop (who apparently lives on the street) writing tickets for people who cut through in the morning.
It might be that the road is not publically maintained by the county I live in but rather privately maintained. If that is the case, if they don’t want people using it, then they should gate their “community”. If it were a private road, I would expect to this sign , but there isn’t one, leading me to believe that it isn’t private.
Is this legal? Did some just put up this sign and people just follow it? How can I find more information about this and how can I change it?
Contact your local town/county clerk first of all to see if any ordinance has been passed. If the cops are there, then it’s likely there is something – cops can’t write tickets unless some law is broken. Even if the cop lives there, if there’s no law, the ticket can’t be enforced.
It’s quite possible the residents of the area got an ordinance passed, arguing it was a danger to kids if cars were allowed to drive through.
Around here, you’ll sometimes see signs that say “No Thru Traffic” on streets like the one in the OP. I suspect it would be very hard to enforce, but if the cops wanted to stake out the road and bust anyone who drove straight through, I don’t see why they couldn’t. Side streets are meant to allow people to reach their houses; they are not major commuter arteries, and were not designed to handle large volumes of traffic.
Could it be that the sub-division had to put the roads in place and the owners now enfore a no drive thru rule via orninace.
Drivers had to circumnavigate the area before roads so they should complain unless they are willing to pony up!
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I believe there are one or more streets within the Rockefeller Center in New York that are private property. For 364 days of the year the streets are open to the public (vehicles and pedestrians). However, one day of the year the streets are closed to all “traffic” to preserve the private property rights of the owner.
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As others have mentioned, perhaps this “street” is actually private property and the owners are attempting to protect it with the 6-9am restriction.
OMG, I was just thinking about this - really! Near me lies the 580 freeway & 238 junction. A mess, it is. They recently took an offramp and made a group of streets used as a thoroughfare off limits completely - like blocked off, new lights, many signs.
This development has hindered me personally in more ways than one. Used to be when coming southbound on 580 I could take the Strobridge exit which is about a mile closer and turn right at the offramp and use one single street to get to the road I needed to use. No more. Now I can’t use the offramp at all unless I want to turn left, leading me into downtown Castro Valley. Useless completely for the folks who live to the south of the offramp - unless increased gas consumption is the goal - these neighborhoods now have to go out of their way and down a main (sucky traffic) drag to loop around to get to their own homes.
Heading northbound, the new effect of only being able to turn right at that ramp is that traffic now boggles back up and onto 580 - creating hazards.
For the intended comfort of about six neighborhoods, I’ve been inconvenienced. As I encounter the area this morning I was again thinking of how stupid and expensive the measures taken by the county must have been. It’s truly an exercise of waste.
I was wondering why couldn’t they simply place signs on the individual streets barring commuter traffic during the two busy times of the day? That would surely have been a much more cost efficient manner than the additional lighting, signage and actual blockage material.
Take a close look at the sign itself, too. Usually, signs which are legally enforceable will have the relevant statute or ordinance number imprinted on them, either on the front or the back. Around here, they are on stickers affixed to the rear of the sign, while back in New Jersey where I’m originally from they are printed in really tiny letters near the bottom corner on the front.
A buddy of mine went through this a few years back in Albuquerque. In that case, because the streets were maintained by the city, there was no enforceable way for the residents to prohibit the through traffic.
However they were able to get the city to install lots of speedbumps, and put a diagonal divider into one intersection that made the route much less desireable for the commuters.
They also got the city to upgrade an existing street into an effective bypass of the neighborhood.
Oh, yeah, my buddy was one of the commuters, not a resident.
A private agreement is not a law; if people are driving on a private road, then I suspect the relevant crime is trespassing.
I’d almost bet that in the Maryland motor vehicle code (or whatever it is called) there is a provision having to do with cutting through minor roads, or something similar. Those rules have a lot of provisions most police don’t even know.
Around here, the local municipalities have the right to control traffic on their streets, and the state controls traffic on its roads. Why should “no driving between 6-9 a.m.” be any different than “no right turn” – or putting up a stop sign, for that matter? We have a number of streets here that limit or block through traffic in morning or evening rush hours, during school hours or whatever.
If the signs said “No right turn (except for residents of Elm Street)” "STOP (local residents excepted) " Then there would be no difference.
When all are paying for the construction and maintaince of the streets, then all should have access, providing a suitable vehicle.
And there is the issue of enforcement. “I was going to my friend Dave’s at 1411 Elm, but I saw his car was gone, so there was no point in stopping, Your Honor.”