County Updating Traffic Calming Program

By Lisa Neff

Envy another neighborhood’s speed bump?

Manatee County has a program for deciding when to deploy traffic calming tools and it’s getting an update to ease the process for applicants and evaluators.

County commissioners April 15 heard a brief presentation on proposed revisions to the neighborhood traffic calming program with the expectation of voting on the issue later this spring.

One of the top requests from residents, according to Vishal S. Kakkad, the county’s traffic engineering division manager, is for the county to address speeding motorists on the street outside their home.

“The vast majority of requests, hands down, are related to this,” he told commissioners.

Now, Kakkad said, it’s time to update a program that’s more than two decades old.

“Our population has grown,” he said. “Our county doesn’t look like it did.”

Some background: On Aug. 27, 2002, county commissioners approved the “Procedures for Requesting Traffic Calming.”

Since then, the public works department has utilized the procedures to coordinate and manage traffic calming requests throughout Manatee County.

Along the way, the staff developed informal best practices to evaluate the requests, as well as learned lessons through the application of procedures.

Staff are now proposing to incorporate the lessons and best practices into a revision to the procedures, which can help citizen groups or homeowners’ associations evaluate their options to deal with uncalm traffic.

The NTCP applies to public residential streets in unincorporated Manatee, while similar programs exist in area municipalities.

Thoroughfares — collector and arterial streets — are not eligible for traffic calming under the program, which means no HOA is going to land a speed bump on Manatee Avenue.

But here’s how an HOA or neighborhood group might get a bump on a side street used to dodge beach traffic, circumvent congestion in a school zone or beat the red lights on thoroughfare:

Step one. A group submits a written request for traffic calming on a specific street segment to the public works department. An HOA can submit such a request or any neighborhood group that consists of four property owners on the street. The request must identify a traffic problem and include contact information for the property owners.

Step two. Public works’ traffic engineering team conducts an initial evaluation of the street, including determining if there are any preliminary solutions, such as posting speed limit signs.

The team also looks at whether the minimum criteria can be met:

• The posted speed limit is 30 mph or less.

• The street is a through street connecting between two collector streets, two arterial streets or a collector to an arterial street. Simply put, “a through street is any street that a driver can use to ‘cut through’ from a larger street to another larger designated street.”

• The street must have at least one section with 1,000 feet or more distance between stop signs, sharp curves or 90 degree turns.

Applications that meet the minimum criteria advance.

Step three. The traffic engineering team collects data for a grading system, with points allocated for traffic volume, speeding and the lack of sidewalks or trails.

The team is looking for applications that get at least six cumulative points. Lack of sidewalks or a trail scores a point. The average daily traffic volume of 1,001 vehicles scores five points. An ADT of 300 vehicles scores one point. The higher the percentage of speeders, and the higher the speed, the more points scored.

If the data evaluation is passed, the traffic engineering staff produces calming options.

Step four: Owners of properties along the street and in the neighborhood are asked to vote on a proposal and 67% need to support the proposal to go forward.

Step five: If the community backs the proposal, it goes before the county board.

Step six: If the board approves the application, this is literally when the rubber meets the road, when traffic calming devices are installed.

“Then we go from there,” Kakkad said.

And motorists go a little slower.

A flow chart for Manatee County’s neighborhood traffic calming program. Courtesy Image