There soon will be less thump-thump from the rubberized bump-bumps that have been the focus of complaints to Indian Trail Improvement District officials for months.
“ITID made the decision to remove the speed cushions from Avocado and Persimmon [boulevards] after a request was made by Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue and hearing concerns from our residents,” ITID Executive Director Burgess Hanson said Wednesday.
The removal began the week of Jan. 12 with four of the rubberized, mat-like tables being pried up along Avocado and two on Persimmon. The cushions, which cost several thousand dollars each, will be used elsewhere on lower-traffic roads where residents request them. Nineteen of the rubberized tables remain in various locations.
“This has been in the works for months,” ITID President Elizabeth Accomando said. “If you hit them too hard, you get bounced around, plus they’re slowing down fire-rescue.”
Because of the area’s many dead-end and dirt roads, and the distance between fire stations, PBCFR response times have been consistently higher than the countywide average, and the addition of speed bumps on Avocado Blvd. near Fire Station 26 was not helpful, according to Accomando and Supervisor Richard Vassalotti, a former PBCFR captain who for years commanded the station.
“They slowed us down,” Vassalotti said this week. “They added minutes to our response time.”
The fire-rescue ambulances “can’t straddle the bumps,” Accomando pointed out.
“Imagine being in the back of one of those, hitting a bump while trying to work on a sick or injured person,” she said.
The first of the so-called “speed cushions” — which cover approximately half of each lane — were installed in early 2024 as a traffic-calming pilot program on high-traffic roads where speeding was an issue, according to ITID records. Supervisors opted for the rubberized cushions over construction of more costly asphalt tables across the entire roadway.
Supervisor Betty Argue said the modified speed tables were always seen as an experiment, and “if we didn’t feel they were effective, we’d replace them with asphalt tables.”
According to a statement released on the district’s Facebook page, there are contingency plans to install the larger, wider asphalt cushions at some of the locations where the bumps are being removed.
“The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office has assured [us] it will increase speed enforcement along Avocado and Persimmon boulevards following the removal,” Hanson said.
“If we see speeding is still a problem on those roads, we’ll put in the asphalt cushions,” Accomando explained. “But I hope not.”
ITID board members have been looking for years at ways to address speeding and cut-through traffic on the district’s long, straight roads. Town-Crier articles dating back decades cite the need for traffic calming as an issue of concern for district officials and residents.
“You have to look at the whole big picture,” Argue said of the inconvenience of the bumps and other traffic-calming measures. “This is about the safety of pedestrians, bicyclists, walkers, runners — and drivers.”
Over the past decade, ITID has worked with county and regional planners to solve the problems, which could be more easily and successfully addressed with the introduction of more stop signs, Accomando, Argue and Vassalotti agreed.
“We’ve been working since 2014 to get more stop signs out here,” Argue said.
Vassalotti ran for his first elected position in 2024 focusing on traffic safety issues in the district. “As a former fire-rescue captain, I don’t like any of the speed bumps,” he said. “If we can get more stop signs, maybe we can get rid of them.”
ITID officials cannot direct installation of stop signs on their own at locations they choose because that is considered a policing power, which the district does not have. As an unincorporated section of the county, county approval is needed.
Vassalotti said recently that he has been working behind the scenes to push the stop sign issue with the county and hopes to see a decision soon.
He has successfully advocated for the installation of LED-powered stop signs with flashing red lights at many existing two-way intersections that are particularly dangerous.
“We’ve been asking the county for more four-way stop signs that would help avoid some of the horrible T-bone crashes we see,” Accomando said. “If the county stopped stalling and allowed us to put stop signs in certain places that we need them, we wouldn’t need speed cushions.”
