On Wednesday, the chairwoman of the Committee, Marta Kotello ("Progressives"), announced at the plenary session that a meeting with residents will take place on September 10 at 6 PM at the Koka Rīga center on Krasotā Street 12. ## The Slower You Go, the Cheaper It Will Be The 1905 Park area is, I can say, familiar to me – I walked its historic streets for five years to attend the 43rd secondary school (then Russian, now Gerdera). Since spring of this year, radical changes in traffic have been introduced in Grizinkalns in a voluntaristic manner: * a maximum speed of 20 km/h has been set on Varna, Alauksts, Zvaygzhnyu, Laboratory, Terese, and Lauku streets; * a maximum speed of 30 km/h has been set on Ata, Stadium, Rudolf, and Sapiers streets; * tariff zones C and D have been introduced for paid parking; * and at the corner of Varna and Laboratory streets, concrete blocks with sparse vegetation now block the street. But even such order, it turns out, is "not sufficiently perceived by many road users" – according to the Municipal Police, as of July 15 of this year, 426 violations were recorded on Varna Street! ## There Are Options However, not everything is so bad: it turns out there are as many as four solutions for organizing traffic on Varna Street, M. Kotello reported. This was confirmed at the Committee meeting by Kristaps Kauliņš, the director of the Department of External Spaces and Mobility. Of course, the buildings constructed around 120 years ago during the era of horse-drawn carriages, in the style of Jugendstil and examples of wooden architecture, are not suitable for storing personal vehicles – especially given their current dimensions. But we must think about the passage of emergency services – in this regard, it makes sense to install "smart" cameras instead of concrete. Or, as is done in several European capitals, hydraulic bollards that can be removed at the request of firefighters or ambulances. ## Suspicious Survey However, the most controversial result was the public opinion survey – 76.9% of respondents indicated that they perceive the introduced changes positively. The department received 3933 opinions. However, as it turned out, when counting the votes, neither specific residence nor the number of votes was taken into account. That is, one could cast their verdict simultaneously – from a smartphone, tablet, and computer. So K. Kauliņš had to admit that the methodology turned out to be not very relevant. For their part, opponents of the innovations collected 3065 signatures on the Manabalss.lv portal. All of them underwent the appropriate identification. Above all this hovers the "Grizinkalns Neighborhood Society," which consists of... 129 members. However, the initiator of this organization is none other than Ms. Kotello.
