Beverly Drive Time Trials

I just came back from lunch with a Beverly Drive resident who took issue with our most recent editorial. He convinced me that he is sincerely concerned about the safety of children walking to Armstrong Elementary. He said his wife has been driving his daughter the half of a block to school each day because of it.

His favored solution is not to shut down Beverly Drive entirely, but to make Beverly one way (going west only) while sending the traffic that would be headed east on Mockingbird down Armstrong to Abbott and back up to Hillcrest. He said he’d timed it and that the Armstong/Abbott route is faster than is Beverly in its current state.

Since it was a nice day, I decided to put this to the test. To see the results of my unscientific time trials of the different routes between the intersections of Armstrong/Beverly and Beverly/Hillcrest,

Eastbound
Beverly Drive: 5 minutes, 5 seconds
Armstrong/Abbott/Hillcrest: 5 minutes, 42 seconds

Westbound
Beverly Drive: 5 minutes, 2 seconds
Armstrong/Abbott/Hillcrest: 5 minutes, 29 seconds

So Beverly is faster, it seems. To be fair, I seemed to be driving down Beverly at a time relatively light on traffic. Though there was roadwork going on at Fairfield, and I got stuck behind a slow-going driver at one point near Dallas Country Club.

I attempted to stay as close to the speed limit as possible at all times. This was most difficult along that wide stretch of Armstrong by Preston Road (where it’s difficult not to go faster) and on a stretch of Beverly (on which it was difficult sometimes to go fast enough) that had 7 homes I counted under construction, with vehicles lining both sides of the street.

I also should note, as did our editorial, that the strange intersection at Harvard Avenue seems bound to cause big traffic snarls if a lot more traffic is routed through it. I would think the time that route would take would increase if it became a formal detour.