NHERA -

Text of NHERA President Stan Miller's remarks to the City Council seeking a speed hump for Dunes Parkway

June 20, 2006

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I'm Stan Miller, president of the Norton Hills Estates neighborhood association. I'm here to ask for your help with a traffic problem in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood includes more than 110 children aged 15 and younger on nine streets centered on Dunes Parkway. South of our neighborhood, Dunes is a windy, hilly road. As you head north toward our neighborhood on Dunes, you leave a housing development and travel a few hundred yards through undeveloped woods. Then you come around a curve and that windy, hilly road flattens out and straightens out, and what you see ahead of you is a dragway: a quarter mile of flat, straight, wide road. What you don't see are the three school bus stops, and all those children. The speed limit is 25 mph. Some drivers come around those curves into our neighborhood at 40, or even 50, and occasionally even faster than that. And some drivers ignore the stop sign halfway down the road. We've asked for stop signs at the south end of the neighborhood, the intersection of Dunes and South Hilltop Drive. The Department of Public Works says that stop signs aren't warranted there because visibility is good enough and because there's no history of crashes at that intersection. We're disappointed by that decision, but I'm not here to argue it or ask you to overturn it. I'm here to ask you to work together with us to solve the problem before there's a crash, before a child is hurt or killed. And I'm here with a specific suggestion about how to do that. We would like a speed hump installed on Dunes Parkway, just south of South Hilltop Drive.
Notice that I said a speed hump, not a speed bump. We all know and hate speed bumps, those things in parking lots that make you slow down to 2 or 3 mph and then you still feel like your muffler's going to fall off. A speed hump is a kinder and gentler way to calm traffic. They're typically 12 to 14 feet long and only 3 to 4 inches high; you can cross one comfortably at 25 to 27 mph. In a study for the Federal Highway Administration, the Institute of Transportation Engineers found that speed humps reduce speeds by an average of more than 7 mph, or 20 percent – more than any other traffic calming device. Many cities have used speed humps with good effect, but I anticipate that you will have three areas of concern. Your first concern is probably the possibility that a speed hump could delay emergency response. That's a legitimate concern, and one we certainly share; no one wants the fire department or the ambulance to get there late.	Map given to council members
We're asking for one speed hump; the study by the Institute of Transportation Engineers found that fire trucks and ambulances are usually delayed only 3 to 4 seconds by a speed hump, and almost always by less than 10 seconds. Further, because of the layout of surrounding streets, the location we propose is not likely to be used frequently by emergency responders; they are more likely to access our neighborhood from the north, and to access the neighborhoods south of us from the south and east, rarely crossing the location we propose. Your second concern is probably about snow removal. I spoke with Bill Cowern, the transportation operations engineer for the city of Boulder, Colorado. They know a little bit about snow in Boulder, Colorado. Mr. Cowern tells me that despite an extensive network of speed humps, Boulder has never had a problem removing snow from streets where they are installed – never had a plow damaged by a speed hump, and never had a speed hump damaged by a plow. Your third concern is probably about cost. For the record, my wife and I voted for the millage increase, both times … but I know the budget is tight. Mr. Cowern tells me that a speed hump can be built for about $1,000. And I said a little while ago that I wanted to know what we can do together to solve our traffic problem, so here's my share: Our residents are prepared to help pay the cost. Will you help us? Will you direct the Department of Public Works to build a speed hump on Dunes Parkway?