DIY traffic calming for residential streets? (Bad driver mitigation)

October 16, 2024 1:22 PM

In my Pacific Northwest (USA) residential neighborhood, there is all kinds of bad driver behavior. Managing this falls to traffic enforcement (Police) + street design (Dept of Transportation), but both are short staffed. Meanwhile, we have yahoos going 40 in a 20MPH zone, running stop signs, etc. What kind of traffic calming measures have folks employed successfully?

Note - not interested in suggestions related to the above (Police & Dept of Transportation). They are a known quantity, and there's no chance they can make effective changes fast enough to make a dent in the *current* issue. Long term, yes. But not today or next week or next month.

Open to all your ideas, especially things that have worked elsewhere.

* Drivers use residential streets as East-West cut throughs between major North-South roads.
* They may or may not be residents of the neighborhoods they are speeding through.
* Default speed limit for most streets in question is 20MPH.

posted by 4midori to Grab Bag (14 answers total)

Oh man, I feel you. I also live on one of those residential streets that people use to get between major thoroughfares, and it sucks. Every time I look out the window I get annoyed by somebody just rolling through the stop sign on my corner at about 20mph.

There are always those "slow down, kids live here" signs you can put up on medians or next to the road or whatever, although I tend to doubt that the people who are blowing through stop signs pay much attention to them.

I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anything you can do that will be both effective and legal. I bet DIY speed bumps would get removed in a big hurry and you'd probably be breaking some kind of law.
posted by number9dream at 1:42 PM on October 16 [1 favorite]

If you want effective guerrilla street control, get a bunch of 2"x4"x12 boards, paint them orange, and use a powder-charge concrete nailer to "neck-down" the intersections. Lie the boards on their side, not vertically, so they are just 1.5" of obstruction. The boards will slow down drivers dramatically because they don't want to drive over them but not create any kind of hazard for emergency vehicles. A powder-charge nailer will let you do the whole intersection in about five minutes if you have help. Also, the boards can't be trivially removed, and when they are removed, there won't be significant damage to the road that the city might make you pay for.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:58 PM on October 16 [9 favorites]

Two strategies that I've seen work, both of which involved organizing a neighborhood watch style group:

• The group arranges to have a rotating group of members wearing a high-vis vest sitting in a lawn chair with a "stop" sign and a "slow down" sign during the busiest hours. Ostensibly they are there in a volunteer capacity to escort kids across the busy road while wielding the "stop" sign. However, most of their time is actually spent stepping into the road, looking speeders in eye, and holding up the "slow down" sign. The idea being that, psychologically, it is harder to ignore someone looking you in eye than an unattended sign.
• The group double parks their cars to create a "bottleneck" in the road where the opening is not wide enough for two cars to pass through simultaneously. Traffic has to slow down to "thread the needle" and bi-directional traffic has to take turns passing through the opening. This might draw traffic citations, so the cars used for the bottleneck are rotated every day to spread out the costs.

posted by RichardP at 2:02 PM on October 16 [8 favorites]

Some communities in Canada have taken to panting vibrant, busy designs in intersections to slow drivers down, because it creates "visual noise" that awakens them from their stupor. They do get permission from the city, though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:03 PM on October 16 [1 favorite]

Please note that I have no idea if this is legal, but you can buy speedbumps.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:05 PM on October 16 [2 favorites]

You might be interested in looking up tactical urbanism and guerrilla urbanism .

Unfortunately, cities are often more invested in removing these types of projects than the solving the original problem, but they can make a difference at least temporarily and in some places have been a way to draw attention to the problem and lead to long term improvements.
posted by radiomayonnaise at 2:13 PM on October 16 [6 favorites]

Another PNW resident here, who works for a municipality with some road jurisdiction. I will say, although I do not work in the road section of my municipality so I am not the authority, that nothing you do independent of your jurisdiction (read: on your own) to physically alter any roadway/intersection is legal to do, nor will it last long once it's discovered. And if you get caught in the act of doing them, you might get cited.

RichardP's community watch-style ideas can work, but they require significant buy-in by neighbors to both start and maintain.

Street murals/intersection painting as seanmpuckett mentions is a really good idea, but it does require close collaboration with your municipality - not just from a permit/allowance POV, but because "normal" paint washes away and wears out quickly, and a town/city/county will paint in a much more durable, lasting way.

Honestly, the best strategy for quick action towards a resolution might be to get the attention of any receptive local media outlets. Take video of cars blasting through the area at high speed, running stop signs, etc., and share it with local news that might want to run with a COMMUNITY OVERRUN BY TRAFFIC DANGER-type story. That can turn up the heat faster than almost anything, especially if there's a school nearby.
posted by pdb at 2:17 PM on October 16 [5 favorites]

People in my neighborhood use these signs that are a neon silhouette in the shape of a child, with a flag that leans out into the road. It seems to work slightly better than a normal sign. I think there is something about the implied motion that can create a reaction in drivers.
posted by hovey at 2:27 PM on October 16 [3 favorites]

You might be interested in City Repair, who paint intersections in combination with other community building stuff like places to sit.

Safe Routes to School involves working with the city, but may involve different people to put pressure on.

In my city, people often (legally) park cars they’re not worried about damaging to slow down traffic. Getting mulch piles from Chip Drop or your local power utility can serve a similar purpose.

People speed through the rutted dirt road a couple blocks from me, so poor road conditions may help less than you think.
posted by momus_window at 2:29 PM on October 16

Here's a story about some DIY traffic calming here in Milwaukee. I dunno if this guy's makeshift roundabout is still in effect, but it seemed to make a difference at the time.
posted by dis_integration at 2:57 PM on October 16 [2 favorites]

How wide are your roads? Everybody in the neighborhood parks their cars on the road across from each other, as far from the curb as is legal. Preferably the biggest possible vehicles right across from each other. It's surprisingly cheap to keep tabs and insurance for old vehicles.

However, if your roads are wide enough that still leaves room for 2 cars in opposite directions to travel freely, then there's nothing legal to be done.
posted by flimflam at 4:19 PM on October 16 [2 favorites]

Down here people use thick marine ropes for speed bumps. You might want to paint them bright orange.

On the other hand, the same traffic control people who can't bother to police your street will likely be very diligent in telling you such a thing breaks the rules.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:26 PM on October 16 [1 favorite]

"If you want effective guerrilla street control, get a bunch of 2"x4"x12 boards, paint them orange, and use a powder-charge concrete nailer to "neck-down" the intersections."

This a horrible suggestion. Aside from being illegal, it's potentially dangerous for anyone who drives over a loose board, even at the speed limit, potentially dangerous for anyone standing nearby if a car sends a loose board flying, and horrible and dangerous for bicyclists. Also, powder charge concrete nailers use a .22 caliber charge. The newer ones have silencers, but they're not silent.

I've flagged the original comment and I'm flagging mine, as well.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:09 PM on October 16 [5 favorites]

Painted-on fake speed bumps. (apologies for the awful tiktok format)
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:17 PM on October 16