The solution for bikes is not to eliminate the cul-de-sac, but to eliminate the barrier … which can be done if all new cul-de-sacs must include a through bikeway.

That still leaves the extra public expense for firefighting, ambulance services and police services that cul-de-sacs imposed on the wider community, but at least it addresses MY personal need.

None of these people is raising a family, that’s quite obvious.

Not obvious at all. Plenty of us have kids. We just don’t have the same idea of what constitutes “community” and the best way to get it.

Growing up in the Catskills, I knew a lot of kids who would have loved to have a community like that, but the other people around the cul-de-sac didn’t have kids in the same age range. Because of the cul-de-sacs and general car-oriented distances of their neighborhoods, in order to see friends they had to walk or bike on through-streets, which had higher traffic.

Until driving age, the kids with the best social lives were those who lived within a short walk of the village green along quiet side streets with sidewalks. After driving age, the kids with the best social lives were the ones whose parents could afford to buy them the best cars – and pay for gas and maintenance.

Now I live in an apartment building in a dense, walkable neighborhood, and my son sees his friends walking to and from school. In a few years he’ll be able to walk to visit them by himself. Our streets could definitely be safer, but we’re working on that.

So, Anne, how about not assuming that your experience is true of everyone else?

When we moved to the cul-de-sac neighborhood, we had a sense of community within days, quite literally. People gathered in the circle to get to know us. Kids visited others’s homes, and even very young children could safely cross the street to play without too much supervision. We lived there for three years, and I still miss it.

Now, we live on a drive-through street, which is very convenient for people getting from one place to another in our town. It’s heavily used. But we are going on six years in this home, and we still don’t know some of the kids at the far end of the street. We know our immediate neighbors. I supervise my kids much more closely on this street, because it’s dangerous. People drive very fast. Even though my kids are older now, there is no sense of safety.

Transportation wonks want to make the world over to suit policy theories. But I say communities should come before theories.