As individuals stay indoors in cities to prevent potentially getting COVID-19, certain local government have been experimenting with alternating functions for public roads. In some cases, this has entailed closing them off to cars, to ensure that citizens can walk or bike around and also obtain some workout without having to evade other pedestrians.
Yet there’s additionally been another shocking uptick since cities have been reasonably inactive, and also at least one city is thinking about doing something concerning that too. The rise in question relates to street auto racing, which a climbing variety of individuals have actually been taking part in since late.
As Max Finkel reports at Jalopnik, Atlanta’s federal government is taking into consideration developing a specialized space for road competing to happen.
… the plan, which continues to be freely defined however essentially totals up to shutting roads for races as well as donuts, was first suggested to Mayor Kiesha Lance Bottoms by her eighteen-year-old kid. Mayor Bottoms then approached experts from Bloomberg Associates working for the city to discover the expediency of such a solution, where public roadways would certainly be blocked off to set apart drag racing and also side-shows from normal traffic.
There’s been some pushback from within the local government regarding this– as well as questions of motorist safety continue to be unanswered. (This is still, as Finkel notes, really early in the drawing board.) It does seem significant to see a city sanctioning behavior that could have been discredited a few months earlier.
Just like numerous measures taken by municipal governments during this time around of crisis, there’s an equilibrium to be struck between total safety and security as well as keeping people from feeling winter blues. It’s not yet clear if this job is feasible, but the truth that the concerns are being asked at all is substantial.