Is The Fast & The Furious making a movie on my street?

"I live my life a quarter mile (of 4th Street) at a time."

If summer is the time to slow down and enjoy life, I wish someone would tell that to the drivers careening up and down 4th St. North where I live – roughly, between the Stillwater Country Club golf course and Laurel Street. Whether they’re late for their tee time or just feel like it’s OK to go full Dom Toretto now that they’re a little ways out of downtown, many drivers are (at best) being disrespectful of our tranquil North Hill neighborhood and (at worst) a menace to bicyclists, people crossing the street, and kids like my neighbors' adorable toddler.

While I don’t have hard data, I’m sure the average speed has ticked up on my street since it was transformed into a straight, seductively smooth stretch that practically entices people to put the pedal to the metal. Kudos to our public safety officials for being responsive to this ongoing issue, regularly placing “Your Speed” signs and parking unmarked police cars. My neighbors and I are truly grateful. However, these resources are also needed in other parts of the city, so after a few days, the signs and the cops move on, and the speeders surge right back.

There are many ways to slow traffic that don’t involve speed bumps and humps. Using different road materials has been shown to reduce speeds. Another nifty innovation is the Swedish Actibump. According to its website, “The Actibump radar system measures the speed of an approaching vehicle… If the driver is within the speed limit…the road surface remains flat and they pass over the Actibump without feeling a thing. … If the driver is going too fast, the surface panel sinks a few centimetres into the road...This delivers a clear reminder to slow down.” The system cleverly ignores emergency vehicles. The company claims that Actibump reduces speeding offenses by up to 80%. Maybe worth looking into for future road improvement projects?

Meanwhile, here are other traffic calming strategies that seem reasonably affordable:

Road “diets”: The idea is simple: basically, narrow the road in various ways, like painting a bike lane and/or encouraging residents to parallel park on the street. I can personally attest that when a lot of people park their cars on the street, such as on a section of Laurel St. West east of the Harbor Bar, it definitely makes you slow down.

Rumble strips: Traffic calming, road diets, rumble strips – who knew that traffic engineers had such a great sense of humor? Temporary rumble strips tend to be used in construction zones, but could they be placed on troublesome streets for a week or two at a time? Unlike speed bumps or humps, they can be removed in the winter, so no issues with snowplows; and because drivers don’t slow down and then speed up again, they would be less polluting. The downside is, well, they rumble.

Bert Wouters, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Optical Illusions: Cities including London, Philadelphia, and Ísafjörður, Iceland, have implemented optical-illusion crosswalks and faux speed bumps and humps. Very creative! The downside is that people who regularly drive these streets get wise to the illusion pretty quickly – and fake-outs can create distrust about “real” barriers and signs. As one commenter put it, “Creating flat objects that contain depth cues …will, over time, literally train our brains that these cues are unreliable, or worse, that they indicate the absence of a bump. Really really bad idea.”

Obviously, I don’t have all the answers. But if I am elected as your next city council member, I look forward to exploring innovative, cost-effective ways that we can continue to make Stillwater ever more safe and liveable, exploring best practices and getting input from a variety of stakeholders – including you.

To that end, I like the way certain cities let residents share ownership of the process. In Philadelphia, you can request a street calming review and, if 60% of households on your block sign a petition, the city will design and complete traffic calming measures on that street. In Oklahoma City’s Alternative Speed Abatement Program (ASAP), residents can directly participate in addressing traffic speed concerns in their neighborhood by submitting an application and committing to matching funds with the city to cover construction costs.

As the Global Designing Cities Initiative grandiosely states: “Change streets, change the world.”