Help - How to get a speed bump?

[moomincarrier]

Hello everyone,

I`ve just signed up and am asking for help/advice already.

Has anyone campaigned/petitioned to get speed bumps on their street in the interests of child safety?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as there is a large number of small children in my neighbourhood and I would love to get the ball rolling on this.

Many thanks,
Julie

I haven't done it but have looked at traffic calming for my area... and it seems to fall down to the County Council, rather than local council.

Have a look at Local Transport Plan and Safety Camera Partnership.

You may find that Vehicle Activated Signs (VAS) are an option that may be considered, due to their cost and mobility (so they could be reused at another site in future).

Information about VAS (from Surrey County Council)

Read up on the terminology used to describe different types of speed bumps. Road Tables seem to be a preferred option, compared with cushions.

Hi nannynick,

I`ll read over this and try to find my next step.

Thanks for the helpful links and very speedy response.

J

I'm reading everything wrong today

I thought this was going to be a thread about getting pregnant really quickly...

moomincarrier - contact your county council highways department. With luck they will be able to point you in the right direction. It can take a very long time though to get anything done... lots of consultation is needed for most traffic calming. Thus why things like VAS are easiest, not so many organisations need to know about it (it does not really affect the speed of a fire engine!).

fruitshoots - speed bump ... can see how you could get confused.

moomincarrier - Leaflet which may be handy, given your location.

Nannynick thank you so much for getting me started, you rule!

Ill get stuck into this next week, weathers much too good just now for anything but play.

Fruitshoots - thanks for the giggle!

Contact your local councillor and get them to help with pressure.

We did that (in Glasgow so slightly different local authority strucutre) and his involvement really did make a difference.

It helped that there was an issue with speed merchants thoughout the neighboruhood though - so a number of different spead reducing measures were put in place around the area.

Gather evidence of speeding. it helped us that there were a number of accidents in our (long, straight) street, whcih included one car flipping and landing on its roof on the pavement.

.... which was why one of the proposed "solutions", speed cameras showing what speed you are doing, was not suitable, as the boy racers would just have seen them as a challenge to see what speed they could get up to.

In our case, we ended up with some speed cushions (which can be taken out for when the 10K race goes down our street). Elsewhere, they have used: speed notification cameras (the ones which show what speed you are doing, complete with a or a face) on the main roads (where they were appropriate), whih are moved around regularly; more speed cushions; and "physical engineering" - ie building a traffic island to make cars slow donw to negotiate it.

The councillor facilitated involvement with the local police and with the roads depratment.

Hi Prettybird,

Thanks for sharing that, its good to hear someone else`s success story.

Hopefully Ill be able to get some help and will take your advice on this - although we dont have cars flipping in our street...just flipping cars.

Forgot to mention that we already had "20s Plenty" signs on the road!

I'm in the process of trying to get it, and it is very slow.

I'm in NI, so it is a different department responsible (Roads Service), but I contacted them, (included in my letter all the relevant issues - ie school entrances, playgroup, etc), and they conducted a traffic survey by putting those parallel strips on the road which record speed and volume of traffic.

We eventually got the analysis (about a year later) and it showed cars doing over 70 mph along the road. Roads Service are taking forever to do anything about it, even though I have got my local councillor on the case. I got a copy of the analysis, and shared it with the local police commander, and asked them to enforce the speed restrictions.

It has been a 3 year process to date, with very little to show for it.

Organise locally - form a local residents association so that you can show that you are not a lone voice. Posters in house windows showing the strength of local feeling really help, especially if everyone is willing to put them up.

Get figures about numbers of children/ elderly/ disabled in your street. Testimony of how the speed of cars affects people's lives (not being able to let children walk to school unsupervised, older people concerned about walking to shops etc).

Sign up for consultations on things like the council's local development framework, which will set the policy background. Incredibly boring I am afraid, but if you can make it part of policy then you can hold them to that policy.

Good luck.

Is your street such that you could create a slalom with parking and other street features (large potted plants are quite good for making it difficult to pass)? Stickers on bins are good too (especially on bin day when you pass a line of them).

We reduced the speed of the traffic by planting up the verges so the cars have to park further out - the traffic coming the other way has to slow down as the gap is tighter. Worth a thought.