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20mph limit will go far to ensure traffic doesn’t

Steve Magyary Berkeley
Wednesday March 20, 2002

Editor: 

 

Berkeley’s idea of enacting a 20 mph speed limit is superfluous, since the effective limit already approaches zero, given the number of diverters, blocked streets, potholes, mis-timed signals, drivers visioning Nirvana and Volvo drivers. 

Instead, Berkeley should pass an ordinance forbidding all “rolling-motion,” and mark entrances to the city with “You’re entering a Rolling-Motion Free Zone” signs.  

To manage the resultant walking congestion, residents could purchase $200 walking permits, allowing locomotion between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M.  

Walking-meters (failing 90% of the time) and luminescent orange flags would be provided to prevent injuries.  

Violators would be restricted to using the sewers, provided they did not endanger rats and their protected habitat. 

Administering the ordinance necessitates a progressive tax (those living in the hills paying a surcharge due to their gravitational advantage) and would be handled by the “Department for Unified Motion of Bodies” (DUMB), “personed” entirely by supervisors or those already moving at a glacial pace.  

Applicants are screened to ensure they come from friction-motion challenged and discriminated households or are couples engaged in long term same motion (i.e. friction-friction or rolling-rolling) relationships U.C. Berkeley’s entrance policy would give preference to those who haven’t passed the discriminatory and culturally-biased driving exam. Berkeley would cease business with companies using rolling motion and disinvest in the “Axles of Evil”: Ford, G.M. and Chrysler.  

Council would sever diplomatic relations with foreign and domestic naysayers and instead establish a sister-planetary relationship with Mars since it has visionarily enacted, enforced, and practiced such an ordinance. 

 

Steve Magyary 

Berkeley