Planet Money - Original Sign

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

A request for dozens of stop signs flummoxes a town and angers a resident. A show about infrastructure, decision making and stop signs. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. A few months ago, we got an email from a listener about a weird little drama taking place on Long Island. The listener's name is Michael Mann. Let me read you a bit. I printed it out so it sounds like he mailed us a real letter. Hi. I have a story for you. This story involves an entire town and its taxpayers held hostage for the economic benefit of one man. If you'd like to discuss or have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I did have questions and I do like to discuss.

So I called up Michael and he told me about this thing in his neighborhood that has been enraging him for months. Turns out Michael lives not too far from me, in a little neighborhood called Woodmere. So I drove out to meet up with him because I wanted him to show me the source of his outrage. So I grew up on this neighborhood. My parents live about five houses down on this block. No kidding, you grew up here? I grew up five houses away from where I live currently. When Michael Mann was but a boy, he played baseball on these streets. He learned to ride a bike here. He's got two little kids and he taught them to ride their bikes here. His neighborhood looks like your basic suburb. Two-story homes, each with a driveway, a two-car garage, and a tree that is neither too big nor too small. At the moment, we are walking on the road because

no big surprise for a suburb, there are not a lot of sidewalks here. I grew up without sidewalks and we always walked in the middle of the street. And basically no cars drive by us. And we've never had a need for sidewalks because there's not been enough traffic here. We then stop in front of the thing that has been vexing Michael for months. It looms over us, casting a menacing shadow. It is a new stop sign. There has never been a stop sign here. There's never been an issue at this corner. I stop at this corner all the time, and I don't really want to stop at a stop sign.

To make things worse, Michael can see this stop sign from his home office window. It's like it's staring at him all day long, taunting him. So this was the stop sign that started it all. So he decides that he needs to know why this was put here. So he does what any informed citizen does, who also happens to be a tax lawyer who knows how to get government documents. He writes a freedom of information request to the town.

And this is where things start to get a little odd. He receives a map, a police report, and most unusual, the name of the guy who apparently set this all in motion by requesting this very stop sign. And this guy, he doesn't even live here. This is not his suburb. The fact that it's someone from outside the neighborhood, outside the town, you know, he doesn't have to pay taxes in this town. And he never has to stop at the stop sign, not even once. And he didn't just request Michael's stop sign.

In and around Woodmere, this enigmatic somebody requested more than 60 stop signs. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Amanda Aronchik. And I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. Today on the show, why would someone request dozens of stop signs in a town where they do not live? And why would the town put any of them up? To answer those questions, we hit the road. Put our feet on the gas. Go bumper to bumper with the town.

Nothing can stop us now, Amanda. Oh, nothing can stop us from getting to the bottom of this caper. And what a very little story about a stop sign says about making big decisions on infrastructure. So Michael Mann, the intrepid tax lawyer turned sleuth, seems to have gotten stopped in his tracks by a peculiar piece of municipal infrastructure. Someone was requesting dozens of stop signs in a place where they didn't even live. To figure out what was going on, we needed to answer an age-old question. Where do stop signs come from? Our search for an answer started by watching old town board meetings.

Well, good morning, everybody. This is the town of Hepstead town board meeting for February 23rd, 2021. So, town meetings, they are long. Supervisor Clavin. And they are often all about traffic. Making that left-hand turn, it's already insanely dangerous. Have a great deal of concern of the road work that's being done on Carolina and Long Beach Road. We're getting a lot of people coming from different neighborhoods, parking their cars and just sitting in their cars for hours.

And yes, a town has the authority to put up stop signs on its roads. This is the town attorney describing the process at one of those meetings. The town has the ability to put into place things like stop sign, handicapped parking. Putting a sign into place is not cheap, even though the materials themselves are not that bad. The sign is about $60, the mounting post about $150 plus some concrete. But there's also the traffic survey, the town meetings, the labor. After all that, it can cost thousands of dollars. And if you are running traffic survey, the town meetings, the labor. After all that, it can cost thousands of dollars. And if you are running a town, you're not just putting up new signs. You've also got to worry about the existing ones. People crash into them. Kids vandalize

signs. So they might read stop hammer time or they might spell out poop instead of stop. That's my favorite. But a town, a town only has so much authority. It's supposed to follow federal guidelines. So there is a manual called the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Kevin DeGood is the director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress. He says that the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD, is the national standard that governs all traffic control devices. It's like the constitution of street design. The MUTCD, or MUTCUD as I call it, came into existence in 1935 to make things uniform on the roads.

The manual made sure that, say, Rhode Island didn't make its stop signs periwinkle or chartreuse. Now the manual is pretty old school, written for a country that was just falling in love with cars. And because we love cars, we make cars, we want everyone to buy and drive cars, that's had the effect of deprioritizing things like walking and public transportation. We have built all of this infrastructure. So moving away from that is really hard, even with the urgency of climate change. Anyway, back to stop signs. So if you go to page 52 of the MUTCD, this is section... Briefly, the manual says that a stop sign is recommended slash required if one of these three conditions are met. One, more than 6,000 cars drive through the intersection each day.

Two, there were three or more crashes there. Or three, if the view of the road is obstructed. Is there a clause where it says you have to put a stop sign up because some guy who doesn't live here requested one? No. No. Some guy who doesn't live here requested one? No. No.

Now, we can't be 100% sure, but it seems highly unlikely that Michael Mann's stop sign met those requirements. Here's how Kevin says things usually go. All infrastructure projects involve tradeoffs, and the stop sign is somewhat a microcosm. The tension at play is between safety and efficiency. Safety and efficiency. If we prioritized making sure that no one was ever hit or killed by a car, we could just put stop signs all over the place. But then every car that's trying to go a mile or two is going to be stopping, you know, at almost every block. You would almost certainly end up with a corridor that was safer, but you'd also then have a corridor that's much less efficient. You're going to trade

some safety for efficiency. We have made that trade-off because, remember, the U.S. transportation system isn't just about traffic signs and highways. It's also about how quickly we move people and goods all around the country. Our transportation system has, at the top of its hierarchy, always be moving more cars faster. Because we have prioritized cars for so long, we've built a system where some people are bound to be basically sacrificed. The line between safety and efficiency tilts heavily towards efficiency. We drive more than three trillion miles a year. There are going to be some accidents. Even an

incredibly well-designed system that had safety as its top priority, which ours certainly is not, there are still going to be some accidents. So where to put that line? Partly that is just a human judgment. Partly that is a political question and not merely an empirical one. One of the things Kevin finds most surprising about the case of Michael Mann's stop sign is that the town's decision appears to prioritize safety over efficiency, the opposite of what usually happens. Clearly, something odd was going on. But when I called the town, they would not get back to me. So I tried Michael again. I guess my first question is, have you had any updates? Have you heard from anybody about the stop signs? I have heard zero updates. I haven't heard anything

from them, no. Now look, a stop sign is obviously not the world's biggest deal. But we've all had that thing that disrupts our routine that we have zero control over. Maybe it's that someone keeps parking in your bike lane or your favorite coffee shop just changed their hours. The difference here is that Michael just would not let it go. He would not yield. Not satisfied with the documents explaining why he got stuck with his stop sign, he then tried to get the town to take it down. I called and I said, look, you know, how do I go about getting the stop sign removed? And he told me on that first phone call, and I don't know his name, the gentleman who picked up the phone of the Department of Traffic Control said,

yes, we know that the stop sign is put up and we kind of have to put them up because we're worried about being sued. The town is worried about being sued. In a follow-up email, the town clerk explained. She said that in municipal law, if a government is put on notice that there's a defect or unsafe condition, they have to do something. Go look at the corner, evaluate the problem. Have you ever seen fluorescent spray paint around a pothole? That is what they're doing, saying essentially, yes, we know there is a pothole here, we will get

to it. And if they don't do something about the pothole and someone gets hurt, they could be held liable. In other words, the town figured that this had to be some kind of legal scam, because why else would some out-of-towner request dozens of stop signs? It really does seem, if they're being honest with me, that they are in this bind. So what do we know about this mysterious stop sign requester? Well, his name is not a mystery. Ben Dubin. It's right there on the stop sign request. But what is it that's driving this guy? One clue? Ben Dubin has a YouTube channel where he posts videos like this one. This one is a short dash cam video of a square

van running a red light. Underneath the video, it says unsafe driving by impatient. Can't really say the word here. There are a dozen of these short videos, each featuring some bad driving, unsafe lane changes, failure to yield, driving the wrong way down a one-way street. And Ben is also super engaged with traffic Twitter. Yes, there's traffic Twitter. And most curious, he appears to be involved in multiple lawsuits. They're very specific. One's a class action lawsuit challenging a $45 driver's fee. A couple relate to freedom of information requests. For instance, he was trying to get a list of broken streetlights. He seems to really love prying information from the government's filing cabinets.

All of this was enough that even the intrepid Michael Mann did not want to confront the 60-stop sign requesting traffic vigilante. But of course, it's our job to make the tough calls, or in this case, to send the tough tweets. We tweeted at him and then waited. Meanwhile, we started to look into the town's fear of possible lawsuits. To do that, we called up Professor Greg Schill. He's an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. Professor Greg Schill. He's an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. I study transportation and the legal institutions that govern our everyday movement.

We asked Greg what he thought about the town's worries about getting sued, and he answered after some very lawyerly reflection on the question. I think the idea that a town or a city in New York would adopt safety interventions merely because of a fear of litigation sounds unusual to me. That's because what a town is supposed to do is actually pretty straightforward. They follow that big old manual, the MUTCD guidelines. They do a traffic survey and then make a decision. And if they make an informed decision, then phew, they are probably safe from future legal action, regardless of whether they put up the stop sign or they don't. They basically just have to say, we looked at it, we made a

decision, done. Greg says that what often happens, though, is that someone proposes some way to enhance safety on the streets and then someone else sues to oppose that plan. This happens all the time with plans for bike lanes or crosswalks or traffic lights. There's opposition, and it most often comes from an unrepresentative, politically influential, and well-funded minority. So what's the example for that? There are so many. I'll give you one from New York recently. The 14th Street Busway. The 14th Street Busway. So a little bit of context. There is this bus, the M14, and it has the very difficult task of trying to cross Manhattan via 14th Street. And there's usually so much traffic on 14th Street that the bus won the pokey award for being the slowest bus

in the city, clocking in at 4.3 miles an hour. So a few years ago, some transit advocates proposed a plan for the busway that would make 14th Street primarily for buses so they could move faster. But there was pushback. A wealthy owner of a townhouse who lived nearby opposed the adoption of this sustainable, efficient transportation improvement that would improve the health and safety of people living nearby and speed up bus travel, making buses more appealing than, for example, Ubers to get across town. In the end, after extended litigation, the owner of the townhouse lost, and the 14th Street Busway became permanent in 2020.

But Greg says the city really had to fight against this lawsuit led by one man with a lot of money. political system and our legal system, small groups of wealthy, influential people can exert outside influence to stop reform. Greg says this is kind of like nimbyism, not in my backyard, but for transportation. Maybe we call them nymphies, you know, not in my front yard, or maybe nymphs, not in my parking spot. Anyway, the point is that one stop sign desiring traffic vigilante can really gum up the works. All of this really raises one question. Who is this guy? After the break, what the heck is Ben Dubin doing? When we started working on the story, I expected it to be hard to get to talk to Ben Dubin,

the mysterious litigious stranger who wants stop signs in a town where he doesn't live. And I expected the town, well, I expected the town to get back to me. Over the past month, I have phoned them a dozen times. I've emailed 10 different officials over 15 times. As they say, bupkis. Not even an email back thanking me for my email. But Ben Dubin, he just took a couple of days. But then we were finally talking. So I guess the first thing is, do you mind describing yourself just in terms of your interest in traffic and infrastructure? Well, it's not really a

traditional interest in traffic or infrastructure. You think of somebody like a traffic engineer or someone interested in like road design or something like that. I just started going outside and walking. Back in 2007, Ben says he was a pretty sedentary guy, wanted to start getting more exercise. And so he decided to start walking around New York City where he lives. And as he's walking, the first thing he notices is just how bad the sidewalks are in his neighborhood. And he's like, why isn't anyone doing anything about this? So he becomes that guy who does something. He calls into the city to report every cracked sidewalk, every pothole, every missing street sign. Let me address the other basics about Ben.

No, he is not some wealthy lawyer. He does technical support for health care companies. And while he doesn't live in the town of Woodmere, he does go there at least once a month to visit his relatives. And that is when he noticed all of these intersections with no stop signs. I happened to notice there's another one, there's another one, there's another one. So I started noticing that it's not a one-off or two-off situation. But then I started noticing, wait a second, this is a huge problem. There's all these intersections without any stop sign. Ben, as you can tell, is squarely in the safety over efficiency camp. So one day he decides to write a big list of all the intersections where he thinks there should be some traffic control. When he emails the list to the town, it is the

third or fourth time he's requested stop signs out there. What do you think is the total number of stop signs that you have requested? Probably in the neighborhood of 70. 70 total. And how many of the stop signs that you requested have gone up? I have not checked. You would think I would check, right? I would think you would check, yeah. How come you haven't checked? Because once I report something, I feel like I've done my due diligence. I did everything I could, basically. I don't really have an interest in like going back and checking at all 70 locations

to see if they installed it on every single spot. As far as Ben was concerned, he saw something, he said something, and that was that. We did ask him directly if his plan was to request stop signs and then sue the town if they're not put up. Is that your plan? Was that the plan? No. I don't care about settlements. That would be like sort of insurance fraud-ish. Right. Honestly, I believe him. I mean, looking at all of these little lawsuits and traffic squabbles, you really get the sense that none of them are remotely about making money,

that he genuinely cares about this stuff, and he thinks that as a citizen, this is what he is supposed to do. And that seems to be behind what he was doing in Woodmere. But all the town saw was somebody who didn't live there, who seemed to be a lawyer requesting a ton of stop signs. They didn't know his real intentions. Would you want them to think like what would you say to the town if you could say? Thank you for installing the stop signs. I appreciate it. And I'm sure at least some of the residents out there appreciate it. And what would you say to Michael Mann? I would say, really? So you have to stop for two seconds if you leave your house? I mean, really? I understand that he's saying like, oh, there's never been an accident. But I mean, that's what they said about the Titanic. that he's saying like, oh, there's never been an accident. But I mean, that's what they said about the Titanic. Okay, so it seems unlikely that Ben Dubin's requests were part of a big

scam to defraud the town. But what happened here points to just how hard it can be to make good decisions about infrastructure. I mean, just ask Michael. If you look out your window, is that stop sign still there? Yes, it's still there. I see it. I pass it. I can't leave my house without running into it. I told Michael everything I had learned about the no longer mysterious Ben Dubin. I mean, a lot of what you've said makes sense. His Twitter feed is full and his YouTube channel are full of traffic incidents. And for whatever reason, he really does care about traffic and safety. Ultimately, it looks like Michael is stuck with his stop sign. The town said that now that it's up, it's going to be that much harder

to take it down. I have gotten resigned. And I can't lie. I mean, when I pass that stop sign, I get annoyed. Now, I don't know where I mean, when I pass that stop sign, I get annoyed. Now, I don't know where that falls in the stages of grief. I mean, I'm resigned that it's not going to change, most likely, but I'm annoyed that it's there. If you missed Planet Money Summer School, it is now available in its own podcast feed. Search Planet Money Summer School and get all the episodes from season one and season two. Clearly, we love to hear from you. Email us at planetmoneyatnpr.org. We are also on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok at Planet Money.

Today's show was produced by Audrey Dilling and mastered by Isaac Rodriguez. Planet Money's supervising producer is Alex Goldmark. This episode was edited by Aaron Edwards. Special thanks to Sarah Bronin, Autumn Harris, and Rob Viola. I'm Amanda Aronchik. And I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

And I'm Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.