Deb Lovely asked the city for speed humps to stop cars from blasting down her street. She had no idea what she was signing up for.
Lovely, who lives on Lawncrest Road in Upper Westville, said she has been trying to slow traffic on her street for years. (Click here for a 2010 story about the neighborhood’s trouble with speeding.) Lawncrest is a popular cut-through between Whalley Avenue and Fountain Street.
Lovely, who’s lived on the street for 27 years, said people speed so badly that in just eight months, her neighbor had two cars totaled, struck by speeders while the cars were parked on the street.
In August, 2012, Lovely called on City Hall for relief. She submitted a “Complete Streets” application to have speed humps installed on Lawncrest. This August, it looked like she would finally get her wish, when the city began installing five humps.
The relief troops came five weeks ago, in the form of city contractor Laydon Industries. Workers milled down the road at five spots. The work was intended to be the first step in the installation of long-awaited speed humps on the residential street. But the project has stalled, leaving the neighborhood with a series of hard-edged rough patches, which haven’t solved the problem of speeding traffic, and have instead created a new problem.
Vehicles passing over the rough spots make a loud ka-thunking sound, and larger vehicles hit the milled rectangles so hard that nearby houses shake, according to neighbors. Click the play arrow to hear a sample.
The aborted project has not stopped cars from speeding. It has only made them louder. Lovely said school buses and delivery trucks are the worst, and send out rattling vibrations to surrounding houses.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
“They just should have done this the right way,” Lovely (pictured) said. “We’ve had such a battle trying to get the humps, and now the battle continues.”
Lovely said she has called various city departments a half-dozen times looking for answers. Her across-the-street neighbor, Bruce Warner, said he has called about three times.
City traffic tsar Jim Travers said he regrets the delay. He said the speed hump project was delayed by a slight re-design, which called for painting the humps with a more durable coating than normal street paint. The contractor hasn’t had the new coating in stock, Travers said.
Lovely said she’s worried about what the vibrations are doing to pipes underground. Warner agreed.
Warner, who lives at the corner of Lawncrest Road and Green Hill Terrace, said he gets woken up at night by vehicles hitting the rough spot, shaking his house.
“I can feel the house shaking,” said Warner (at right in photo), who lives across the street from Lovely. It’s an old house, with pipes that could be shaken loose, he said.
“If they went this far, they should finish,” Warner said, pointing to the milled rectangle in the road in front of his house. “I pay my taxes. Just do this.”
“I’m sure the neighbors are frustrated,” said Travers, the city transportation chief. “And rightfully so.”
Travers said the city reviewed Lovely’s Complete Streets application, did a traffic study, found that humps were warranted, and “moved forward with the installation.”
The city recently installed “Speed Hump” signs. Still no sign of the speed humps themselves.
Then, after the road was milled, the city decided to change the plan slightly. The initial idea had been to simply paint the speed humps with the chevron-shaped markings found on other humps in the city. Then the transportation department noticed that the paint doesn’t hold up well to consistent traffic.
“We changed to a thermal plastic chevron, which has a longer lifespan,” said Travers.
The only problem was that the contractor didn’t have the thermal plastic on hand, Travers said. City spokesperson Anna Mariotti said the proper coating is en route via FedEx. She said work should start back up within a week, and should take a week to complete.