"Incompetence and idiocy may describe our Legislature, but I don’t believe it applies to traffic planners."

You obviously have never spoken with any local traffic planners!  Believe me, they are as hung up on their pet theories and formulas, and as removed from reality and common sense, as the worst head-in-the-clouds academic professor.  I found the experiences uniformly frustrating and disturbing.  

On several occasions I have suggested that they modify a particularly dangerous situation based upon my own experiences with safer road and/or traffic designs elsewhere, only to be told such things as "that does not fit our formulas" or "our standards of uniformity dictate otherwise", even when those standards take no account of specific or unique local conditions.  

EVERY traffic engineer to whom I've spoken in Anchorage has had a rigid and blinkered attitude towards road design and road safety.  They are a danger to both themselves and all of us in general.