Recently in Government Category

Jeff Eden just wants people to slow down.

Eden, who lives at 2104 New Hampshire Street, has two young sons. His neighborhood grows younger by the year but he says people are overly-cautious on the sidewalks because most cars whiz by at high speeds.

As drivers encounter backed-up traffic at 23^rd and Massachusetts Streets, they often take New Hampshire as an alternate and speed down its straight-away.

"We just thought that people should feel a bit safer with so many little kids playing near the street," Eden said.

So, Eden and his neighbors signed a petition for traffic calming devices, in this case speed humps, and the Traffic Safety Commission passed it. However, they didn't know that getting it passed only put them at the end of a long line.

Traffic calming has log jammed in Lawrence. What started with a few requests turned into a movement. As requests continue to pile up, the City Commission possesses a long list of projects without any idea how to start.

History

Source: Traffic Safety Commission

Traffic calming devices, which most often include traffic calming circles or speed humps but excludes roundabouts, grew out of safety concerns. If a citizen worried that traffic rushed too quickly through their street, they could plead their case to the Traffic Safety Commission.

In 2001 Lawrence created its first traffic calming device, a partial diverter that prevented drivers from turning from Sixth Street onto Schwarz Road. The city's street division absorbed the low-cost project. Requests remained small and quiet for the first couple of years.

"We had some isolated requests here and there," Lawrence Traffic Engineer David Woosley said. "They weren't too extensive and most could be taken care of within the existing budget."

Requests became steadier in 2003, with the neighborhoods of University Place, Breezedale and Carmel Road all getting in line. But Woosley points to the extensive 2005 project along Harvard Road as the one that kick-started the calming craze in Lawrence.

"At that point we started getting more and more requests for traffic calming throughout the city," he said.

The city tore up much of Harvard Road from Wakarusa Drive to Monterey Way, placing in speed humps and traffic calming circles. A general obligations bond funded the project, which cost nearly $300,000.

Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods President Gwen Klingenberg helped propel the project.

Source: Traffic Safety Commission
This is the Traffic Calming Project Ranking System, which was enabled in 2005. A strike means it's been completed and red means it has been tabled.

"We were tired of people avoiding traffic congestion and speeding through our neighborhood," Klingenberg said. "The city's street design created the problem so we just asked them to fix it."

People most often request traffic calming devices if their street has become an escape route for cars to avoid congestion at major intersections. Neighborhoods with an abundance of children also often get together and decide that slower equals safer.

A study by the American Journal of Public Health found that kids who live within a block of a speed hump were 53-60 percent less likely to be struck by a vehicle.

"I don't think there's any problem with people wanting to feel safe," Klingenberg said.

As it became swamped with traffic calming requests in 2005, the Traffic Safety Commission decided to create a policy to judge the validity of each request.

They decided that local streets, which make up most of the city, had to meet one of three conditions while collector streets, which have higher traffic because of their proximity to popular destinations, had to meet one of four conditions.

Most requests met the policy guidelines. Thus, ranking the projects became the next major step for the Traffic Safety Commission.

"We had to come up with some plan of action as funding became available," said commission member John Ziegelmeyer. "The ranking system seemed to appease most people."

It only takes one citizen to make a request for traffic calming. The rankings, which factor in crashes, volume of cars and average speed, prioritize those requests on a points system. However, projects from as far back as 2004 remain on the list.

"The City Commission kept approving them, knowing that they didn't have any money that year and they would have to get to it some point in the future," Woosley said.

'What does 15 mean?'

When the Traffic Safety Commission put together its initial rankings in 2005, it had seven projects on the list. Four years later and the list has more than doubled. At least two more projects will likely tack on by the end of summer.

The City Commission originally expected to draw from the city budget to pay for the projects. In fact, in 2005 the commission made a special designation in the budget for traffic calming. That money evaporated quickly and the commission couldn't afford to set that money aside again in 2006.

Now it takes a stroke of luck to get a project completed.

When the Lawrence Avenue project passed in 2005 it ranked second on the list. However, the city slated the area for street and curb repair in the summer of 2008. While doing that work, contractors also placed two speed humps along the road.

"Anytime a project street is also set for repair we just kill two birds with one stone," Woosley said. "That's happened a few times in the past couple years."

But for projects that lack future plans for road work it could be a long wait. 

"I guess I didn't really think about how long it would take," Jeff Eden said. "Yeah we're in line, 15 back, but what does that really mean? What does 15 mean?"

The long wait counters the idea that the traffic calming benefits little kids in the neighborhood. The kids that parents worried about during the requests may be driving by the time it's completed.

However, that argument doesn't deter the Lawrence Association of Neighborhoods.

"Traffic calming has done a lot of good for Lawrence," Klingenberg said. "The city won't always be hurting so much financially and eventually these and more projects will get done."

On the other hand, Robin Smith doesn't mind the quasi-work stoppage in traffic calming. As a member of the Traffic Safety Commission, Smith recently voted against Eden's New Hampshire project.

"The problem I have is that too often traffic calming devices are used to slow down traffic to an unreasonable level," Smith said.

Smith proposed that the commission revisit its policy at its June meeting. At that meeting Smith hashed out that his problem isn't with the policy but the implementation of it by the Public Works Department.

Smith jabbed Woosley with a few questions about the practices of the public works staff before deciding that he was fighting a losing battle.

Likewise, Eden believed he stood on the losing end of his request.

Data collected on New Hampshire in early February failed to meet policy standards, but the committee pushed it back to March in order to include University of Kansas students. The second data collection met the requirements and the Traffic Safety Commission passed it in March.

"I didn't think, frankly, that anything would happen," Eden said. "I just thought we'd bring awareness to the neighborhood."

'Get creative'

Vice Mayor Mike Amyx can see the problems ahead in traffic calming.

When the discussion of the New Hampshire project came to the City Commission in July, Amyx laid out the issue.

"Gentlemen, one of these days we're going to have to have a discussion about funding for this," Amyx said. "We're going to end up with a back log of 25 (projects) with expectations of residents, thinking, 'It's going to be our turn.'"

The commissioners admitted they realized what waiting residents have known for years: The system, in its current state, is flawed.

Tough economic times don't have much room for extra road work. Almost every project that reaches the Traffic Safety Commission passes, but none have ever had a plan for funding.

Designated money in the budget only lasted one year and the budget hasn't gotten any bigger since then.

"People care about the calming, not the approach," Mayor Robert Chestnut said. "We may need to take a more comprehensive approach and maybe we can get at a bunch of these if we just get creative."

The City Commission set a future agenda item to discuss the possible ways to fund traffic calming. Suggestions included researching different technologies for creating the devices or somehow packaging them together.

Woosley believes that item No. 6 on the traffic calming policy will become the focus of discussions. It states that the City Commission "may require 0-100% of the costs to be paid by the group of neighborhood making the request."

The City Commission first brought up this idea in 2005 to test how much people really cared about traffic calming. No neighborhood in Lawrence has ever been asked to fund a traffic calming device, but that could soon change.

Eden said he's confident the New Hampshire neighborhood would fund whatever percentage the city asked.

While completion dates and funding remain completely unknown, one thing is clear; the desire for these devices isn't going away.

All signs point to a calm road ahead.