Speed *h*umps, on the other hand, are a tool increasingly used around here, and with good effect, I might add. (It looks like the folks on Waubesa will be having a couple built in the near future.) They don't damage emergency vehicles (local tests have proven this over & over again). They don't endanger other vehicle drivers either.
It is unfortunate that a local reporter would print such misinformation. -Mike Barrett
WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL SUNDAY JULY 20, 2003 PAGE ONE TOP STORY
Humps, bumps slow traffic in Dane County Valeria Davis-Humphrey Wisconsin State Journal
For anyone who has driven Dane County's thoroughfares, the idea of calming traffic might sound inconceivable. Yet the tools to reduce speeding known as traffic calmers are popping up everywhere.
Traffic calmers are those annoying physical barriers drivers might assume are the result of bad engineering: A flower plot in the middle of an intersection, a curb jutting out into an intersection, or an annoying lump on a side street that cuts a block or two off the trip home.
"Anything that can be done to slow down the traffic is a good deal," said Bill Skindrud of Mount Horeb, even if it takes rattling Dane County drivers with a few speed bumps and barriers to calm things down.
These barriers can reduce traffic when a residential street becomes a shortcut, detour or overflow route, or when traffic is speeding up, said Madison chief traffic engineer David Dryer. Usually complaints from a neighborhood's residents bring attention to unwanted and inappropriate traffic patterns, he said.
"It often comes down to people wanting a stop sign. But as it turns out, stop signs only work for a while without constant enforcement," Dryer said. Engineers have known for years that lowering the posted speed or adding more stop signs are only temporary fixes to traffic problems on residential streets, Dryer said. So now they get physical by using barriers.
Madison and surrounding communities have resorted to using almost every type of traffic calmer somewhere, Dryer said.
In Madison, speeders will get a jolt from speed humps on Yuma and South Shore drives; traffic circles are unavoidable on New Washburn Way and Dwight Drive; and a particularly daring bumpout with a tree growing on it keeps cars from using the right turn lane on Mineral Point Road as an acceleration chute to head west on the Beltline.
"There are too many speedy drivers," said Mike Ginter, Mount Horeb.
Traffic calmers enhance safety for crossing pedestrians and bikers as well as motorists, he added.
But many people find the barriers confusing, which is likely to cause more accidents, said Mary Suchomel of Waunakee.
"People just don't know how to slow down," Suchomel said. "They might as well just stand by with a police car and an ambulance because they're going to need it."
Madison has 24 sites with traffic calmers and another six sites are slated to get calmers this year.
"We have a finite amount of funding, about $200,000 a year," Dryer said. "We like to budget about $15,000 to $20,000 per project. Any project that involves curb and gutter or storm sewers is very expensive."
And although no one likes traffic zipping down their street, getting the consensus needed to retrofit a neighborhood can be difficult, said Fitchburg Public Works Director Paul Woodard. Most cities have special committees that work with residents and engineers to find a solution.
But Fitchburg is now putting traffic control mechanisms on subdivision streets before the housing lots are even sold, Woodard said. Harlan Hills and the Highlands of Seminole have traffic circles.
Fitchburg learned in working with local police to enforce speed limits that an area's own residents can be the worst speeders, Woodard said.
"We know this because of who ends up getting ticketed," he said.
A study of Richardson Street showed vehicles travel even faster after passing a posted stop sign to make up for having to pause. So, city engineers are thinking about using narrower streets in neighborhood designs, Woodard said. But the designs still have to take snow removal and fire equipment access into consideration.
"Those things that tend to slow down traffic can cause big problems with large vehicles," said Dan Graham of Stoughton, who spent 23 years in fire protection and emergency services in Colorado.
"Speed bumps are hard on big trucks, especially when you've got a lot of equipment. They shake things up pretty good," Graham said.
He was once working in an emergency vehicle that hit a speed bump at 45 mph, which broke the air line for the brakes, shutting it down. Fire trucks also have problems maneuvering curvy streets, and in Colorado, parked cars got scraped by big trucks trying to get through tight residential areas.
"I think they're a necessary evil," said Dale Myren of Lake Mills. "I have young kids and hate to see people speeding down my street. You can yell at them or call the police, but it doesn't help. Traffic calmers are there all the time."
Middleton is new to traffic calming, but because of its position as a funnel for regional traffic, city officials will be acting soon, said Middleton Assistant Public Works Director Toby Ginder.
"This is not a democratic vote. We take the pulse of the neighborhood, but it's up to the city to decide what to do," Ginder said. "Traffic is becoming more and more of an issue for us. Traffic calming is really a buzz word. What we mean is speed reduction."
But the use of traffic-calming tools needs to stop short of pushing the problem to another street, said Tom Sohrweide, a 30-year veteran traffic engineering consultant for Short Elliot Hendrickson. Sohrweide was hired by Middleton to solve traffic problems on Stonefield Road east of Gammon Road, Valley Ridge Road north of Century Avenue and the Middleton end of North High Point Road.
"Everybody feels the street they live on is very special and they have an anticipation of what they want traffic to do on that street," Sohrweide said. "And often conflicts evolve when the design of the street in the transportation system is different than what they expected."
Local streets are about 32 feet wide. But High Point Road, which runs from Midtown Road north into downtown Middleton, is a 40-foot wide collector street designed to pull traffic out of neighborhoods and funnel it to major streets.
When Sara Simpson's family moved into their home on North High Point Road 12 years ago, the street was a dead end. Now, traffic is steady all day long and backed up on weekday mornings.
"There is a tremendous volume and it keeps increasing along with the speeding," Simpson said.
Two factors are at work when traffic starts to speed up on a residential street, Sohrweide said. Drivers tend to go faster on familiar routes, he said. Secondly, pass-through traffic tends to speed on shortcut routes because it is just a small part of a bigger trip.
To correct the problems on North High Point Road, traffic needs to be shifted back to designated high speed routes by eliminating back-ups on the exit ramps at Greenway Boulevard, University Avenue and Highway 14, Ginder said. But traffic calming tools will still be needed in nearby residential areas.
Then comes driver education, Dryer said, or the period when the road's users learn to slow down. "No matter what you do, you can find drivers who think it's fun to go over a speed bump or around a traffic calmer at a high speed," Dryer said. "But if we can get the biggest number of people to slow down, we've done what we can."
indent
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT <http://rd.yahoo.com/M=194081.3551198.4824677.1261774/D=egroupweb/S=1705044561:HM/A=1663535/R=0/SIG=11ps6rfef/*http://www.ediets.com/start.cfm?code=30504&media=atkins>
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>Yahoo! Terms of Service.
_______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
