Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fayetteville aims to reduce speeding with bumps
FAYETTEVILLE — Speedsters beware: The rubber bumps are coming.
The City Council’s Transportation Committee on Tuesday approved proposals for placement of rubber “speed cushions” on three streets. The cushions will go on Sang Avenue near Asbell Elementary School, Stubblefield Road between Summerhill Drive and Picadilly Lane, and Harold Street between Lee Avenue and Stubblefield Road.
The speed cushions are made of rubber and are 6 feet wide, 7 feet long and 4 inches high. One can fit in each lane of traffic. Estimated total cost for all the cushions is just more than $7,000.
The city has a process to get traffic calming measures in neighborhoods. A resident has to make a request. Then staff develops a project area and provides a petition to the requesting resident. If at least 70% of neighbors sign the petition, city staff will do a traffic study and score the results.
If the project meets the scoring criteria, staff will provide the requesting resident with a proposed layout for the traffic calming measures. The proposal has to gain at least 60% support among neighbors. If it does, the Transportation Committee will review the proposal. Once the committee approves, the project gets added to the city’s work list.
Traffic calming measures can come in the form of speed cushions, planters, plastic bollards, painted crosswalks or other low-cost installations that can be removed if necessary. The city tracks traffic activity after the measures are installed to see if they get the desired effect.
A total of four speed cushions will go on Sang Avenue near Asbell. Two cushions, one for both lanes of traffic, will go just south of Lawson Street. Another pair will go just north of Skyler Drive.
Most of the requests for traffic calming on Sang Avenue came from neighbors
south of Lawson Street, said Dane Eifling, the city’s mobility coordinator. City staff want to start with the speed cushions in the school zone, monitor traffic activity and see if more cushions are warranted after that, he said.
Sang Avenue has a higher traffic count than the neighborhood streets that typically get traffic calming measures under the program, Eifling said. The speed limit is 25 mph and 20 mph in the school zone when children are present. The street averages about 2,300 cars traveling on it per day, according to city data. Comparatively, Stubblefield Road and Harold Street get about 1,600 and 2,000 cars per day, respectively.
Sang Avenue needs better sidewalks, which would help with any conflicts between pedestrians and cars, committee members discussed Tuesday. Sidewalks south of Lawson Street are narrow and have mailboxes in the middle of them.
The city makes an annual list of sidewalk projects based on a scoring system. Council members Sarah Bunch and Holly Hertzberg asked staff to consider Sang Avenue for next year’s list.
“This is definitely an area we should absolutely look at for next year’s sidewalk improvements,” Bunch said. “I know we have a great list of sidewalks, but if we want to put our money where our mouth is, we need to focus on those schools.”
Resident Martha Londagin wrote a letter to the city asking for as many speed bumps as possible on Sang Avenue. Londagin lives on Lawson Street near where the southern speed cushion is proposed on Sang Avenue.
“We have a HUGE problem with speeding cars going north and south on Sang Avenue in this neighborhood,” Londagin wrote. “I constantly have to yell at drivers when I am out running, or walking or riding my bike here to “SLOW DOWN,” and they do not respond back kindly.”
Two speed cushions for each lane of traffic on Stubblefield Road will go east of Summerhill Drive with two more west of Picadilly Lane. Stubblefield has a roughly 2,240-foot-long stretch from Old Missouri Road to where the street bends south to connect to Harold Street.
The top speed recorded in the traffic study for Stubblefield Road was 57 mph. The speed limit is 25 mph.
“It’s one of our highest scoring streets of all the requested streets in terms of the matrix, and we got full support from the neighborhood,” Eifling said.
Two speed cushions will go on Harold Street east of Lee Avenue. One for eastbound traffic will go at the three-way intersection with Stubblefield Road. The intersection already has a small median. Drivers traveling west on Harold Street sometimes cross into the eastbound lane to get around the median, Public Works Director Chris Brown said. Putting a speed cushion in the eastbound lane hopefully will deter drivers from doing that, he said.
The top speed recorded on Harold Street during the traffic study was 61 mph. The speed limit is 25 mph.
“People are basically coming through there and coming through too fast,” Brown said. “This is going to clean up that intersection.”