The Royal Palm Beach Village Council approved a traffic calming policy last week intended to establish a process that residents can follow to petition the village to bring traffic calming to their neighborhoods.
Discussion of the traffic calming policy on Feb. 16 was a continuation from the Feb. 2 meeting, where council members postponed approval so they could get more public input.
Village Engineer Chris Marsh said that village staff had looked at statistics from other municipalities since the previous meeting, as well as the use of flashing radar signs.
Consulting traffic engineer Brian Kelley with Simmons & White reviewed the responses to questions brought up previously.
“One of the things that was heavily discussed was about the residential approval process,” Kelley said. “It’s important to get a consensus for the speed humps because any kind of traffic calming has its pros and cons. That’s one of the reasons that we do have this policy in place.”
He explained that not many Palm Beach County municipalities have a traffic calming policy in place, but there were enough to gather a sample, and the average required 65 to 75 percent approval of residents in the neighborhood.
“That’s quite a bit,” Kelley said, adding that the methodologies differ.
Kelley said that Port St. Lucie, for example, requires 50 percent plus one approval to do the study, but requires 75 percent to actually install traffic calming.
“One of the lower ones was Boca Raton, which had 35 percent for a petition [and] 60 percent to install,” he said, pointing out that about half of the calming devices had to be removed later.
“The majority of those we looked at were well above 60 percent, so what we’re actually recommending for the Village of Royal Palm Beach is that 50 plus one percent is really at the bottom of what common practice is locally, and throughout the State of Florida,” he said.
The procedure for Royal Palm Beach, as outlined in the policy, is that the process begins with a single resident or homeowners’ association going to the village to ask for traffic calming in a particular neighborhood.
“Village staff will do a preliminary assessment, and there’s a number of different criteria, based on speed limit, residential density, things like that, to make sure that the road could have speed calming on it.”
If village staff deems traffic calming as appropriate for that area, the petitioner must get 50 percent plus one signatures of residents in the community. Village staff would determine what that petition area would be.
“[Staff] would give them the paperwork to fill out, then it’s up to the petitioner to go out and get signatures,” Kelley said. “If that is attained, it then goes back to the village, and then a traffic study is conducted.”
The study will look at speed, traffic volumes, cut-through traffic and accidents in the area.
“If it meets the criteria we set up in the policy, most importantly 85th percentile speed, 35 mph speed limit and 30 percent cut-through traffic, then it’s eligible for traffic calming,” he said. “It will need to go through technical staff approval and also eventually to the council for approval, and finally for implementation.”
Kelley said another thing discussed was radar speed signs.
“I want to go over a couple of pros for that,” he said. “They can reduce speed by about 10 to 20 percent, according to a number of studies. Another big advantage is that it doesn’t have any impact on emergency response, whereas speed humps and other types of physical measures would potentially slow down emergency responders. Radar speed signs clearly would not do that, and they’re not very expensive. They are less than speed humps, and you don’t have to install them as much.”
Speed humps must be installed every 250 or 500 feet to be effective, he said.
“Speed signs are more of an educational tool, so it’s not something that has to be installed every 500 feet,” Kelley said. “Another big pro is that you can actually get data. It’s an optional package for a lot of them, so it does make them a little more expensive, but you can collect data so you would have a measure of how effective the sign is.”
On the downside, radar signs are not as effective as physical calming such as speed humps because there’s nothing physically forcing the driver to slow down, he said.
“Some people are certainly going to ignore it, and it’s not quite as effective once you get farther away from it,” Kelley said, adding that there is maintenance involved, and the flashing lights can bother residents who live next to them.
Councilman David Swift asked whether they would be more effective with strict enforcement, at least when they are first put in.
Kelley said the signs are effective even without enforcement, but they are more effective with enforcement.
Vice Mayor Jeff Hmara said he thought that enforcement would help make drivers aware of the consequences of ignoring the signs.
“What makes sense to me is that collecting data, as these devices can do over a period of time, would give information to the PBSO as to where are the areas that there is the greatest amount of speeding going on,” Hmara said. “If you do it periodically and randomly… it seems like a pretty effective way to use the limited resources that we have to make that impact.”
Mayor Fred Pinto agreed that radar signs are a viable option.
“That is one option that we could deploy,” Pinto said. “We certainly would have that model in place.”
Councilwoman Selena Smith asked how the data is stored and what type of data is collected.
Kelley said the data is stored internally, but there are Bluetooth options that can transmit the data.
Marsh said some have cellular capabilities to receive data from the radar sign, as well as programs that can analyze it.
Kelley said traffic calming can have some unintended consequences, such as shifting cut-through traffic and speeders to another, parallel roadway.
He said potential initial study locations include Sparrow Drive, Sandpiper Avenue, Ponce de Leon Street and La Mancha Avenue.
Several residents of Sparrow Drive spoke in favor of traffic calming, claiming that speeding and the resulting accidents have been an issue. One Sparrow Drive resident spoke against traffic calming, preferring the hiring of more law enforcement.
Several residents said they thought the petition process set out in the policy is too much work.
Village Manager Ray Liggins said it would take one person to start the process. If staff determined that the street is eligible, a petition would be provided to them. A study costs about $5,500.
Hmara asked whether there is a way of streamlining the process, such as doing a study first showing where the speed humps would be, then getting a petition.
Pinto said the four roads identified might be a good starting point.
Liggins recommended a rule that a petitioner get one-third of residents to conduct a study rather than 50 percent plus one, then two-thirds for implementation, and that staff go ahead now with studies on the four roads identified by the consultant.
Councilwoman Jan Rodusky asked that the studies begin with Sandpiper Avenue.
Hmara made a motion to direct staff to do the four studies and include cut-through issues as part of the studies, which carried 5-0.
What a crock of crap here! This is a policy for the Village to continue spending money on parks and buildings and not for public safety. It is an excuse NOT TO SPEND money for the safety of the residents. Ray Liggins is paid to keep the community safe, the council is PAID and elected to make the right decisions. This is just pushing off the responsibility and doing nothing. Nothing has been done on Sandpiper for more than 20 years!!!!