Yesterday’s inPortland section of the O looks at home-made speed control devices while also celebrating the City’s new efforts to concentrate marked crosswalks in neighborhood business districts.
Yesterday’s inPortland section of the O looks at home-made speed control devices while also celebrating the City’s new efforts to concentrate marked crosswalks in neighborhood business districts.
19 responses to “Taming Speed on Local Streets”
Of course, the problem with speed bumps are numerous:
1. They harm the innocent driver driving at the speed limit.
2. They slow fire trucks and ambulances. See SecondsCount.org.
3. Even the London Ambulance service is against them. See bromleytransport.org.uk/LAS_Report.pdf (Note that the LAS estimates perhaps 500 cardiac victims could be saved by faster response times while only 280/300 TOTAL are killed in traffic.)
4. Most accidents are not on the type of streets that we put speed bumps on.
5. Some studies claim that bumps cost more lives than they save. (See the work of Les Bunte at Texas A&M Emergency Services Institute)
Thanks
JK
The aritcle describes some fundamental problems.
Streets are engineered for higher speeds than desired. If engineers expect a speed limit of 25, they design with tolerances that allow people to safely drive faster than that. But people don’t drive the limit, they drive to the design speed. Essentially the roads are designed to encourage speeding. We ought to consider that when traffic is going over the speed limit its indicates an engineering mistake, the street was designed for a higher speed than desirable.
Speed limits are too high anyway. 25 mph on a residential street shared with children is too fast. Look at the speed limits in campgrounds – 5 or 10 mph. That is what we ought to expect in neighborhoods. The purpose of those streets is not to move autos, its to provide access to the homes there. There is no reason for allowing people to drive that fast.
Speed bumps are losing their effectiveness. To make them severe enough to slow down a pickup or SUV they need to be too severe for a normal sedan.
The counting of where accidents occur is misleading. There aren’t many pedestrians in the middle of a freeway so there aren’t many pedestrian accidents there. That doesn’t mean the middle of the freeway is safe for pedestrians. It works the same way in determining whether a stret location is safe.
As the population gets older there are more and more people driving with slower reflexes, worse vision etc. We ought to be responding to that by lowering traffic speeds to compensate. I think we need to move away from the idea that seniors should stop driving because it isn’t safe for them to drive as they get older.
Obviously there is a point at which some people shouldn’t drive, but you will find 90 year olds who are perfectly capable of driving to the local grocery store if you didn’t force them to do it in traffic going 40 mph. That may be the difference between them staying in their home and having to move into assisted living.
If we want safer streets, we need slower traffic and that means insisting that they are designed for slower speeds. The neighborhood speed limit should really be no higher than 15 mph. Once you set it that low, the engineers can design it.
There are other, less obvious things that slow down traffic. A tree canopy over the street, on-street parking. Trees in the parking strip next to the street, narrow streets, even the painting that has been done on some neighborhood intersections. All of these make people consider the environment around them and become more alert. Wide streets, with great sight lines and no obstacles close to the street (all of which are engineers goals) all encourage traffic to travel at higher speeds. And those higher speeds make the road less safe, not more.
Meanwhile we have half the Police traffic detail doing a sting operation on bike commuters in Ladd’s addition where speeds are low, crashes few and injuries non-existant. Bizarre.
Ross –
I agree with all of your comments except the one about assisted living… perhaps you meant to say retirement community?
Assisted living is for people who are somewhat independent but need physical assistance for a variety of needs and generally stay close to their residence and care providers. Retirement communities are for folks who do not need much on-demand assistance or intervention but can benefit from centralized services such as a cafeteria or rideshare. Most retirement communities offer shuttle service to nearby grocery stores and medical appointments.
Giving up a car when your eyesight, attention span, or reaction time fails doesn’t mean you need assisted living.
A funny thing: The retirement community my grandmother recently joined has a large parking lot with a space for every unit, and then a separate “visitors” lot. However, the main lot is never anywhere near full because many people there have opted to live without a car. The facility could have saved a bit of money by not constructing the visitor lot had they not simply assumed that everyone wants to drive.
– Bob R.
I’m 100% against speed bumps. I’m however not against visibility enhancements while putting road pieces in that cause drivers to follow the posted speed. Speed bumps however are absolutely disrespectful to the driver.
But a median in, a freakin garden to make a four way a round about, or even just post CLEARLY marked stop signs.
But I also seem to think this entry wasn’t primarily about speed bumps. Crosswalks are nice, especially in a city where people tend to pay attention to other things besides just the other cars on the road.
I saw the painted stripes on 21st, and the curb extension in one place, which could possibly help a lot.
The problem however lies in the fact that they painted the southern and northern end of the 4-way and only the north end has curb extensions. So there is a hypocrisy in the design, encouraging some to attempt crossing where they have no extensions – thus limited visibility, and the other side which is good a clear. ??? what is the dealio with that nonsense?
All in all though, a welcome addition from my perspective.
A very low cost alternative to speed bumps is a dirt street or naturally forming potholes. I have heard a scattering of pea gravel works, but that sounds too dangerous.
Lenny,
As a frequent bike commuter who used to ride through Ladd’s Addition every day on my way to work I can *totally* understand why the residents of the neighborhood decided to ask for an enforcement action (and yes, the cops were there at the request of people who lived in the area,
in a thread on BikePortland.org an officer says one resident complained that he and his wife were hit by cyclists in separate incidents on separate dates. While ). Many cyclists go through the stop signs at speed (20mph) without slowing, and while they’re in no danger of damaging a car they do pose a threat to pedestrians and other cyclists.
People in the neighborhood have the right to feel safe crossing the street, cyclists who blow stop signs at full speed do pose a threat to pedestrians, especially to children and the elderly. Minimizing the threat that cyclists pose in my opinion does us harm overall, we need to be aware of public perception and do our best to ride right. For some the only way to correct their behavior is enforcement actions, which is why I support them wholeheartedly.
I agree with Ross. If we need speedbumps, then we have failed to build the street appropriate to the speed we want on it.
How do we get people to slow down? I am guessing we use speedbumps because they are cheap and appease the locals. Pour some asphalt and shape it.
So now what? How do we remedy without the band-aid of speedbumps? Narrowing most of the roads in the city sounds kinda like a political dead end.
The problem however lies in the fact that they painted the southern and northern end of the 4-way and only the north end has curb extensions. So there is a hypocrisy in the design, encouraging some to attempt crossing where they have no extensions – thus limited visibility, and the other side which is good a clear. ??? what is the dealio with that nonsense?
The point is that pedestrians have the right-of-way at ALL unsignalized intersections. If we begin to teach drivers that they only have to pay attention at a few places we engineer for extra safety for pedestrians, we diminish the safety of pedestrians everywhere.
now, if the city could do something about loud cars and trucks, we’d really be getting somewhere.
With this teriffic Wi-Fi system throughout the entire city why don’t they just put black boxes on all the cars and track everything people do all the time? That would be perfect, then maybe they could pay for the system from MetroFi! I hear they’re already dispatching parking ticket writers. Hey, I know… Why don’t we outlaw cars and rip out all the streets, freeways, etc and force everyone to ride bicycles and walk everywhere.
Why don’t we outlaw cars and rip out all the streets, freeways, etc and force everyone to ride bicycles and walk everywhere.
JK: Be carful!
That is the goal of some of the planning class: A return to the glamours middle ages and the simple life of small villages surrounded by happy farmers supplying plenty of fresh food to the city folk.
Generally planners are unable to see that such a dream is also a dream of poverty, disease and short lifespans. Simply put – they have no understanding of what makes modern society work, but think they know how to “fix it.”
Thanks
JK
JK,
Well if they continue driving out the major employers, everyone in Portland will be on welfare and not only will the truly hard workers have to slave away and producing their food, they’ll have to pay for their welfare checks, too. I say ban immigration into Oregon! That would solve this livability and densification problem instantly.
As for the calming problem that we’re actually discussing….
All this talk about making the car owners even more miserable. Maybe the pedestrians need to be more careful and “look both ways” like they were taught in Kindergarden. I just find it funny that bicyclists can blow through an intersection without even stopping. A couple of weeks ago I was crossing from Pioneer Square to Nordstrom and looked BOTH ways (maybe I’m paranoid but just in case someone is going the wrong way). Anyway…. There was clearly nobody coming and the crosswalk was RED. I proceeded to cross and a Portland cop (on bike) threatened to write me up for “jaywalking” give me a break, I cannot cross but bicyclists can completely disregard any rules? Are they a priveleged class or something?
“Obviously there is a point at which some people shouldn’t drive, but you will find 90 year olds who are perfectly capable of driving to the local grocery store if you didn’t force them to do it in traffic going 40 mph. That may be the difference between them staying in their home and having to move into assisted living.”
Well you know what? It is unFATHOMABLE to me to use old folks as a justifaction for the transit scam! These people should be given white glove town-car service, not have to sit with foul smelling and cursing vagrants while they get from point A to point B. I already tried to show off this ugly town to my grandmother (age 79) and we took a MAX ride from Lloyd to downtown. I was apalled at what I had subjected her to. I’m just glad my 106 GREAT grandmother wasn’t along for the doy and pony show, too! She actually gets around in CARS! Go to you know where transit!!!
While recently using that very crosswalk, crossing legally with the walk light, I witnessed an illegal left turn crossing in front of a MAX train and then crossed the occupied crosswalk. There was a police car in traffic that could not have missed seeing this, but there was zero consequences.
give me a break, I cannot cross but bicyclists can completely disregard any rules?
As was discussed in this very thread, just hours before your comment, there was a significant enforcement action yesterday aimed at catching bicyclists who ran stop signs or failed to yield the right of way.
I am sorry that you got caught while breaking the law… perhaps enforcement is lax in all areas of transportation safety (lax enforcement of automobile violations, pedestrian violations, bicycle violations, and behavior on transit vehicles inside Fareless Square.)
The solution is to form coalitions with all stakeholders and work for balance, not to deride other groups for not getting caught when you did get caught.
– Bob R.
I remember in Korea there were plastic police mannequins standing on the corners in small towns to keep people from zooming through on the main drag. Might work here.
There is a car permanently parked in in a parking lot in the eastside industrial area that looks like a cop car and no matter how many times I seen it, it still makes me think twice.
About. Goddamned. Time.