Portland has aggressively pursued traffic calming and these traffic shaping measures you discuss. I first thought it was brutal and everyone drive really slow.

Portland has aggressively pursued traffic calming and these traffic shaping measures you discuss. I first thought it was brutal and everyone drive really slow. On residential streets, both sides almost always allow forstreet parking, and so the roads don't allow for two way traffic. On other roads they narrow the lanes a lot, using bollards or increasing shoulder. They realize that traffic is a social engineering problem and not a highway engineering one. Now I love it. I drive slower when it makes sense to, and I do so because it's what feels right at the slice of road I'm on, not because of the sign that says the max speed.