[Closed] Anybody had success getting traffic calming measures on “their road”

Careful what you wish for.

My in-laws ended up with a large speed bump out side their house.

You know what's really annoying. Traffic decelerating and then accelerating right out side your house......even more so if they have a big exhaust.

I find the most effect traffic calming measures to be .....potholes - speeding through those hits folk where it hurts..... and parked cars are pretty effective too

I will watch this with interest. My mum lives on a busy road just outside of Bacup, on which some drivers must do 60 even when it’s only 30.

It’s genuinely horrible, and diminishes the quality of life my mum and others deserve to enjoy.

Yet after almost 20 years of this being an obvious issue, the police authority to whom my dad had at one time written, said that they had ‘studied’ the road, and found no serious problem.

Apparently, unless a certain number of people get killed, they won’t do anything.

There is a road near me, where it appears that the owners of a row of houses have clubbed together and purchased a knackered 4x4 jeep. This then effectively creates a chicane in the road and slows down the traffic. It's been there (with a flat tyre) for yonks - presumably taxed so the police don't touch it. Very effective (although someone does then have a 4x4 parked outside their house.

Looking at the google earth imagery it appears to have been there at least three years.

The local authority around here suggest parking cars on the road as "natural traffic calming". Case closed, come back if people are killed regularly.

Careful what you wish for.

My in-laws ended up with a large speed bump out side their house.

You know what’s really annoying. Traffic decelerating and then accelerating right out side your house……even more so if they have a big exhaust.

I find the most effect traffic calming measures to be …..potholes – speeding through those hits folk where it hurts….. and parked cars are pretty effective too

I opened the thread to write pretty much exactly this.

I'd like to see a speed measuring device set up to trigger a 'child' running out in front of the speeding vehicle at such a time that will ensure the driver has no possibility to stop and avoid it.
Ultimately while the penalty for speeding (even if caught) is such a small amount when compared to the cost of running a vehicle in the first place, there is no deterrent and no education.

If a speeding driver believed that they had caused harm (even if only for a short amount of time) they would experience a physical reaction and likely think about the consequences.
Either that or drastically up the penalty - both in cash terms and reduced points allowance.

As above - we have speed pillows outside our house (bus route). One of the joys of lockdown was not hearing the crunch of bumpers and undertrays being constantly smashed into them at 40+mph or the farts of badly remapped hot hatches being floored for the 150m gap until the next set of pillows.

Doesn't sellotaping bunches of weeds to a lamp post have a calming effect?

Parked cars works for me.
Stagger them with your neighbours, some one side, some the other.

I opened the thread to write pretty much exactly this.

Same here ... despite several of us objecting to traffic calming measures on our quiet avenue and to my knowledge noone asking for them the contract had already been awarded and bribes paid before they issued a fake consultation (results of which were not published). [I actually got told who had won the contract and not to waste my time when they issued the fake consultation]

Now we have cars staggered making for bad visibility and very dangerous for kids and now everyone is racing to get to the next gap... the only positive being the bumps make decent take off ramps on the bike ...

We just let the sheep wander about the road. Downside stupid tourists calling at the door "theres heavily pregnant sheep on the road" - as happened last weekend. a) Sheep wander all over roads up here and b) you'll struggle to find a pregnant ewe at this time of the year.

Watching with interest. We live in a 20 zone, albeit on a main road about 5 houses along from a sharp 90 degree bend. The amount of people who come past my house doing 50mph + is staggering, they then have to brake hard for the bend, then I hear them accelerating hard away again. Selfish pricks have woken my daughter up more than once when I’ve been walking her to sleep and also when inside the bloody house!

The pops and bangs dickhead brigade are the worst.. constant acceleration/lift off cycles to get maximum machine gun fire from their 4 banger turbo pieces of shit. Don’t get me wrong, a Ferrari V12, AMG V8, etc etc sound wonderful but there is a time and place. Anyway I’m ranting.. but if you’re reading this Mr S3, stickers on my car, illegal tints, stupid exhaust man - i **** hate you and hope your engine lunches itself at the earliest opportunity.

after 1 fatality on our road cause by a nutter doing 55 in a 30, we campaigned and got some of those intelligent speeding slow down signs fitted, 50% of motorists still ignore them but it helps a bit, we had to do a community speed watch for 12 months and the council fitted a traffic recorder to verify the stats.
I sometimes park my big old 4x4 on the road to slow people down. thinking of putting one of these up aswell.
https://www.securitysafetyproducts.co.uk/security/safety-signs/police-slow-roll-up-road-sign-900x600mm.php?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0rr4BRCtARIsAB0_48MMy6KnJ-Vovjfui7u2YIjuj8TDsvINfn9yLvrjqc7i7WFZyrKZUnEaAp6EEALw_wcB
thing is some people just don't give a funk about speed limits, nor the impact of their actions on others, and with very little real risk of being caught due to lack of policing its an issue we wont ever fully solve until we evolve as a species to not have to rely on cars for every single little journey.

You can apply for a Community Highways Scheme. Budgets up to £250k or so, but most are for less than that. You will need to make your case as evidence based and with the backing of your community. So start with a community consultation to gain support and identify the problem, then you need to propose ideas. Get all the data you can - traffic logging boxes etc. Get the council highways team involved - what will they support. What will the police support? Consult again to get support for what the solution might be. Compile your submission. Cross fingers... Wait. Get it. Get the Council Highways design submission back. Consult again. Comments back to Highways..

This is where we are up to so far.

Bumps are rarely the best answer though.

Speed bumps really are the worst kind of calming measure for anyone that needs to use it. Even at 20 some of them are so badly shaped they cause issues, and the prevalence of SUVs means many just smash over them anyway.

Narrowing the road is a much more pleasant & effective measure.
Parked cars work but they cause visibility issues which aren't great for those parking off-street or for pedestrians / cyclist.

You know what’s really annoying. Traffic decelerating and then accelerating right out side your house……even more so if they have a big exhaust.

We don't seem to do traffic calming measures very well in this country.

It'll not happen, but I'd push for well thought out solutions; blocking rat runs, introducing cycle lanes, crossings, etc. 20mph limits. Adding features like greenery that alters peoples perception of the road.

It doesn't matter how many signs or bumps you put in, we typically have this big slather of tarmac perceived as being for cars only, and to be used to get from A to B as quickly as possible (bumps or no bumps). Absolutely no need for it to be that way on a residential estate.

I came here to say careful what you wish for. Anything that's not a car can make a right old clunk going over speed bumps. Used to get this complaint when I worked in local authority.

Chicanes will impinge parking which I'd guess is at a premium anyway.

Plus, if you think it's hard getting it installed, that's nothing compared to getting it removed.

Do you want to be the person who says it's okay to remove it, then someone gets killed the week after?

Apparently, unless a certain number of people get killed, they won’t do anything.

Which is odd as Rochdale Re from Bacup to Rochdale has more cameras on it than any other road I have ever seen

The locals need to get active and attend neighborhood forums, drag the councillors out of their slumber and send stories in the local rag, they love a picture of a set of grumpy kids

Alternatively dress a manikin in hi Vis and a hat with a pretend speed gun

We managed to get speed sensors years ago, that showed clearly we have a speeding problem along the through road we live on, I know this as I asked for the data logs rather than FOI them. Fair enough, but the council and police won't do anything about it. It continues to be a nightmare, overtakes over the bumps we have (those little square ones that do bugger all in reality), overtakes as you're about to turn on to the drive, 40/50/60 mph drivers and the regular weekend MX bike group of yoofs that use both lanes and the pavements to transit along. We still cannot get the police van here, just a couple of times would send a message to the regular users and speeders. We did have an interactive board for a while, but that got taken somewhere else, not that anyone pays attention. You can see I'm quite fed up by it as essentially we need a serious collision or fatality for anything to be done. I have thought about leaving the caravan across the full width, I'm sure I'd have police here in minutes...

Another careful what you wish for.

One of my neighbours decided to take on fighting against speeding as his retirement hobby We have a 40mph limit on the road behind our houses and you regularly get people doing 70mph plus. Anyway, he tackled it with all the rigour of a recently retired senior Council officer, pulled favours from contacts, wrote stern letters, attended meetings and won a victory! The police agreed to speed trap the road. My neighbour got done doing 48mph on the first day the police went out with a speed gun.

The late Ben Hamilton-Baillie did a lot of work in this area:
http://hamilton-baillie.co.uk/
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/18/ben-hamilton-baillie-obituary
Also see woonerf principles from the Netherlands.

It's not about speed bumps or cameras.

Watching with interest. Live on a main road out of Sheffield and the last but few houses before open countryside and 40mph then 60mph sign. Problem is there’s a short section of dual carriageway just down the road before us so people gun it up the hill and by the time they get to us basically drive as if they’re already in the 60.

There’s no off road parking so getting out of your car is a game of Russian roulette and to make matters worse we’re on a slight curve so not sighted.

So far we’ve lost the wing mirror off the car 3 times this year. Frequently see HGV’s jousting each other in a game of chicken as to who’ll brake first as the road isn’t wide enough. And a continual peep of horns when cars do the same.

I’m frankly sick of it now, wrote to my councillors yesterday and already got a reply (which came as a shock). He’s suggested a community speed as a start and also Highways Department doing a review. I live in (limited) hope.

You dont want bumps. Hard braking, fast acceleating and suspension clunks will drive you mad.
You want parked cars even if you and the other residenst have to buy cheep cars and keep them taxed and MOTed. In the first instance take up every avaliable sapce to make the road as awkward as possible so most drivers will avoid it. Then after 6 months set up a chicane type arangement with the parked cars. The grant sounds like a good idea, you might get priority flower beds or similar at each end.

Make a nuisance of yourselves. Every time a car speeds/ is too loud etc... everyone call 101, they will try to fob you off after the first few calls as it starts to look bad on their records if you keep calling. Look up the relevant law, don't say anti social behaviour, and ask in writing why the police won't investigate if they choose to do nothing. Email the council/ ward counciller, county councillor and MP everytime as well. 20 lots of that 5-10 times a day might annoy them enough to get somthing done. You have to persevere otherwise they will do nothing because they know you will eventually go away.

Speed bumps really are the worst kind of calming measure for anyone that needs to use it. Even at 20 some of them are so badly shaped they cause issues, and the prevalence of SUVs means many just smash over them anyway.

Narrowing the road is a much more pleasant & effective measure.

This. ☝ Speed bumps are crap.

There's a road near me that has had chicanes and bollards installed so you've to give way alternately to oncoming traffic, it works really well. Despite being known locally as the James Hunt Memorial Speedway it's impossible to drive through at silly speeds and doesn't threaten to rip off your sump. Have a look at Charter Street in Accrington on Google Street View.