Thomas MacMIllan Photo
After two weeks of sleeping in the basement to avoid the din of trucks slamming over the speed hump outside his house, Matthew Katz can finally move back upstairs.
On Wednesday morning, after weeks of headaches for Katz (pictured) and his neighbors on West Park Avenue, workers removed the speed hump in front of his house.
Across town near Tweed-New Haven Airport on the East Shore, a speed hump on Dodge Avenue is also on its way out. Like Katz, neighbors on Dodge said the hump’s done more harm than good.
While the humps were installed to calm traffic, they’ve had the opposite effect on the people who have to live next to them. They don’t slow down cars — they cause a terrible racket, and they make the street less safe, said neighbors.
The speed-hump removal marks a setback in the city’s efforts in recent years to slow down cars and make neighborhoods more pedestrian friendly. Those efforts have included the passage of a safe-streets law, the creation of a road design manual, and recently, a new first-of-its-kind raised intersection in East Rock.
Speed humps, which would seem to be among the most straightforward of traffic-calming tools, have turned out to be anything but.
Humps have been installed — to mixed reviews — near the new raised intersection on Edwards Street, on Canner Street in East Rock, and on West Park and Dodge avenues.
On Canner Street, neighbors have called for the speed humps to be painted, but not to be removed. That painting will happen very soon, said city spokesman Adam Joseph.
On Edge and West Park, neighbors have called for humps to be taken out altogether. (Others called for them to be painted.)
Complicating the picture further is the fact that people who live elsewhere in the East Shore have been requesting speed humps on their streets, said Morris Cove Alderwoman Arlene DePino. “And the people that have them don’t want them.”
Joseph said it appears that speed humps don’t work well on straightaways like the one where a hump was removed on West Park Avenue. The speed humps on Dodge Avenue will be removed in “the near future,” Joseph said. The humps cost $3,000 each to install and $1,000 to remove.
“We’re going to look at different traffic calming measures for the area,” Joseph said.
The speed hump is now a speed divot.
“Clearly Annoyed”
On Wednesday morning, as workers finished up the removal of a hump outside his house, Katz said good riddance.
He said his speed-hump trouble began several weeks ago when the city put one in front of his door. “I ended up in the basement for two weeks,” he said.
The hump led to so much traffic noise that he couldn’t sleep in his bedroom, Katz said. Cars and trucks don’t slow down for the hump, making a huge amount of noise when they fly up one side and thump down the other, he said.
Trucks are the worst, he said. UPS and FedEx trucks speed over it and cause the most noise. “They hit it with such gusto” then “come down and crash,” Katz said.
Other trucks shake tools out going over the hump and just keep driving, he said. And drivers who don’t crash getting over the hump rev their engines once they’re over it. Other times, people swerve to try to get around the humps. “I couldn’t park in front of my own house.”
Katz broke down the psychology of a northbound driver in an attempt to explain why the speed hump didn’t work. Drivers on West Park Avenue coming up from Edgewood Avenue to Whalley Avenue have to go around a curve with two speed humps (which aren’t being removed) then negotiate the roundabout at Elm Street. That stretch of traffic-calming measures slows drivers down.
“But when they get out of it, they’re clearly annoyed,” Katz said.
The rest of West Park is a straight shot to Whalley Avenue — with a speed hump in the middle. Drivers don’t care, and floor it to get to Whalley, Katz said.
Katz said he approached his alderman, Marcus Paca, about the speed hump problem. He then put together a petition and eventually had a visit from City Engineer Dick Miller, who saw that the hump wasn’t working, Katz said.
Katz offered high marks for both Paca and Miller for their responsiveness. But the city should have consulted neighbors before the hump was installed, he said. No further street modification should happen without a neighborhood meeting, he said.
Katz acknowledged that traffic goes too fast on West Park Avenue. “It’s a speed zone.”
If speed bumps aren’t the answer to that problem, what is? Katz suggested making West Park a one-way street, putting a motorcycle cop there three days a week to hand out tickets, or erecting a speed-detecting sign to indicate “you’re going 80 miles an hour, idiot.”
Driving Insane
Dodge Avenue hump.
A Tuesday visit to Dodge Avenue found homeowners with the same gripes as Katz.
A woman answering the door closest to one of two speed humps said “they’re a nightmare.”
She said she’s found “nuts and bolts and screws” in the street, shrapnel from full-speed encounters between trucks and the hump.
The speed hump causes constant noise to the point where she can’t have her windows open and has retreated from the front rooms of her house, said the woman, who declined to give her name.
“It’s ‘bump bump’ all night long,” she said. “It’s driving me insane.”
When it’s not bumping, the noise is the screeching of brakes as people try to stop for the hump at the last minute.
People drive too fast on Dodge Avenue, and it’s because “it looks like a mini-highway,” the woman said. Speed humps won’t cut it; the street needs a total overhaul if it’s to slow traffic, she said.
“A lot of utility trucks going by are just going airborne,” said Ed Fitzgerald, who lives one house away from the hump. He said he’s gotten two flat tires in the last couple of weeks, which he attributes to the truck shrapnel his neighbor mentioned.
Fitzgerald said he doesn’t know how to solve the problem of cars speeding on Dodge, but fast cars are better than speed humps, he said.
“We’re trying to find a balance between public safety and our quality of life,” he said.
Just because some one picked a lousy spot does not mean that speed humps are not a great idea. I have been observing them on Canner Street and elsewhere and they are remarkably effective. But I agree 100% that they need to be brightly painted to alert drivers. The rocket scientist who decided to install them without painting them should be bonked on the head and poked in the eye Three Stooges style at least three of four times daily until they are painted. Some people can only be taught logic as an automatic response or defense mechanism. They lack to brain power to understand simple things without such stimuli.
JMS