Cruise Control

Are speed jockeys terrorizing your once-quiet residential street? Are commuters using your street as a cut-through route to avoid a traffic-choked freeway or boulevard? Are you concerned about traffic safety in front of your own home?

If you’re facing a traffic crisis, help may be as close as your city department of transportation. City traffic-management programs are posting new “stop” and “speed limit” signs, painting narrower street striping, installing roadway medians and speed humps, which are slightly broader and flatter than speed bumps, and using a number of other strategies to reduce traffic overload on residential streets throughout the Southland. Collectively, these strategies are known as “traffic calming.”

Before a city will take action on a traffic problem, concerned residents must jump through any number of hoops, the nature of which varies from one jurisdiction to another. The process might include petitions signed by property owners, approvals from a traffic-safety committee or city council, a study of traffic conditions on the street and an engineering study to determine whether installation of speed humps or other devices is feasible.

Some cities allow renters to participate in the process, but others only involve property owners. Some cities pick up the tab for what are known as traffic calming devices while others expect the property owners to make voluntary contributions toward the cost of the installations. And some cities emphasize the installation of physical devices while others call upon local law enforcement as the first line of defense against speeding on residential streets.

Homeowners Sometimes Are Tapped for Funds

In the city of Ventura, for instance, property owners must reach a two-thirds agreement before any permanent traffic calming devices are installed on their street, and currently, the owners are expected to pay the full cost of installation.

The voluntary pay-it-yourself policy has proved controversial, and the City Council is expected to review it along with some other aspects of the program early next year.

“The devices cost from $1,000 to as much as $50,000. One neighborhood has tried two different [types of temporary] devices, but can’t seem to get the two-thirds level [of agreement]. And some people living on the street believe they shouldn’t have to pay for basic traffic safety,” says City Transportation Engineer Thomas Mericle.

Riverside, which installs about two dozen speed humps each year, expects property owners to contribute about one-fourth of the total cost, which amounts to $350 per hump. Engineering Tech II Dave Chapman says gathering the signatures generally is more challenging than collecting the funds.

“Be sure to get the property owners’ signatures because we check them,” he advises homeowners. “Tell [the other owners on the street] it’s not necessary for them to pay their share of the cost because it’s not that expensive. For 10 houses, it’s only $35 apiece. If two or three of the homes don’t want to pay, [someone else] can pick it up. It’s more important to get the signatures.”

Los Angeles used to require payment from owners in some situations, but now picks up the full tab for speed humps that are deemed warranted on the basis of a needs-assessment study, which reviews the street’s traffic patterns and traffic capacity, the incidence of speeding and the number and type of traffic-related accidents that have occurred on the street.

Depending on the budget cycle and the availability of funds, homeowners may wait a year or longer after final approval before their speed humps are installed. The waiting period can be bypassed if the owners volunteer to pay for the humps themselves.

The resolution of most residential traffic problems begins with a written request from one or more local residents to the city’s traffic engineering section. In Ventura, the process starts with the submission of a petition-like letter signed by three to five property owners asking the city to evaluate their concerns about speeding or traffic volume on their street. The city then completes an initial evaluation and holds a neighborhood meeting to discuss the traffic problems and possible solutions.

Ventura’s traffic calming policy has four levels. Levels one and two include increased law enforcement, additional “speed limit” signs, re-striped lanes, restrictions on commercial vehicles and a visit from the city’s radar trailer, which educates motorists by flashing the zoned speed limit and the motorist’s own speed on the side of the trailer.

Levels three and four include turning restrictions, speed humps, traffic circles, street closures and the like. During the program’s three years of existence, more than 20 streets have been evaluated, with all but one resolved through level one or two measures, according to Mericle.

Traffic calming assessments in San Bernardino also start with a written request.

“Any individual or group of people who has a specific traffic concern can make a request to our traffic section. The request will be evaluated and if there is a problem, it will be sent to our traffic safety committee for consideration,” says City Engineer Raymond Casey.

Each situation is evaluated individually.

“In one location, we are implementing a traffic calming effort that includes parking striping and a median to reduce the width of the driving lanes. Narrowing the street with striping and the median has a tendency to reduce speeding, and provides an opportunity for pedestrians to split their time going across the road,” Casey says. New pedestrian crosswalks or traffic signals have been added to about a dozen San Bernardino streets in the last 12 months.

Case-by-case consideration means residents don’t always end up with the traffic calming approach they first requested.

“We look at approximately 100 streets a year, and in the last several months we’ve approved [traffic-calming devices] in the neighborhood of 50% of the streets. That’s not to say there aren’t times when people request a traffic signal or a ‘Stop’ sign that isn’t warranted, but we are able to do something else,” says Casey.

The Ups and Downs of Speed Humps

Judging from the number of homeowner requests reported by city traffic management officials, the most popular traffic calming device is the speed hump.

Speed humps are one of the most effective traffic management devices because they are self-enforcing, significantly reduce speeding and discourage cut-through by commuters, says Los Angeles Senior Transportation Engineer Yadi Hashemi.

But speed humps are not without controversy. They’ve been excoriated by motorcyclists, bicyclists, joggers and disabled people, and some cities have shied away from the potential risk of exposure to liability for related injuries.

The delayed response time of emergency vehicles, which must come to a near standstill before venturing over each hump in the road is another concern. A seconds-long delay may sound insignificant, but it can mean the difference between life and death for someone who is having a heart attack or is trapped in a burning home.

Some homeowners believe speed humps and signs are unsightly, or are bothered by the prospect of extra noise from vehicles driving over the humps. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to attempt to withdraw their names from petitions they’ve signed upon being informed that a speed hump or sign will be installed directly in front of their property--even though that possibility is stated in the petition, notes Los Angeles Senior Transportation Engineer Pauline Chan.

Riverside has addressed this issue by requiring that property owners’ petitions must be signed by any owner whose home is within 100 feet of a proposed speed hump before any speed humps are installed. Chapman says three petitions are languishing on his desk at the moment because, while the homeowners have gathered enough signatures overall, the people who will have a hump directly in front of their own homes haven’t signed.

Some cities are plagued by the perception that speed humps and other traffic calming devices are most likely to be installed in affluent neighborhoods. Traffic management officials say such disparities exist, but aren’t the result of bias on the part of their agencies. Rather, affluent homeowners are more likely to request government services and have more spare time to work through the bureaucratic process systems and go door-to-door with petitions.

They also are less likely to face language barriers. Los Angeles is addressing this situation by translating its speed hump information into Spanish.

And finally, traffic calming devices may tend to be more prevalent in owner-occupied tracts than on apartment-heavy streets. That’s especially true in cities that require signatures and financial contributions from property owners.

Marcie Geffner is a Los Angeles free-lance reporter.