Traffic solutions hit bump in the road.

Byline: JEFF WRIGHT The Register-Guard

For residents along Eugene's Friendly Street, the speed bumps that dot their road are asphalt blessings that have accomplished the goal of slowing and reducing traffic.

But you can get a different opinion if you talk to Eugene emergency crews who now avoid the street at all costs. Or to some neighbors who live on Monroe, Adams and other adjoining streets where motorists regularly detour to avoid Friendly's bumpy ride.

One of Eugene's first efforts to protect neighborhood livability through "traffic calming," the Friendly speed bumps are now viewed as a mistake by city traffic engineers who want to remove several of them between West 24th and 28th avenues.

At the same time, they hope to add new speed bumps to other residential streets in the Friendly neighborhood - and incorporate other traffic-slowing devices, such as "bump-outs" and center islands, along portions of West 24th Avenue and Polk Street.

But the future of traffic calming in Eugene is at a crossroads - thanks to a philosophical split between the city's public works department and fire department.

"Our missions are diametrically opposed," acknowledges Nathan Duke, the city's neighborhood transportation planner. "We're trying to slow traffic down, and they're trying to provide their services as efficiently and fast as they can."

The two departments' search for a workable compromise may hinge on recent traffic calming measures installed along East 33rd Avenue between Donald and Hilyard streets.

Instead of speed bumps, the city has built a dozen bump-outs and three center islands with "turtle" bumps - clusters of small yellow ovals that protrude from the roadway - that force drivers to slow down as they swerve in and out.

The city has a fire station just to the west and regularly uses 33rd Avenue to respond to emergencies in the south hills. Emergency workers have complained that the street's original turtle bumps were too large for fire and other emergency vehicles to navigate safely and quickly.

Public works crews installed new, smaller bumps, but it's unclear whether the revised design will satisfy fire and emergency officials.

"Emergency responders like to see flat, straight, wide streets where they can go as fast as they can," says Ruth Obadal, fire department planning chief.

On 33rd Avenue, she says, "We're trying to come up with a design that will discourage people from speeding while allowing the fire department to go at normal speeds during an emergency."

The fire and public works departments agree that speed bumps should no longer be built on arterial or "neighborhood collector" streets with a higher volume of traffic.

But until and unless the dispute on 33rd Street's design is settled, traffic calmers of any type won't be allowed on 24th, Polk or any other collector street in town, Obadal and Duke say.

Multiple factors

Many neighbors exasperated by worsening traffic, meanwhile, say they're willing to accept some trade-offs.

"We want the fire department to have quick and easy access, but in the 15 years we've lived here there's not been a fire in the neighborhood," says Jens Andersen, an accountant who lives on Polk Street near 26th Avenue. "That doesn't mean there won't be one tomorrow, but for the sake of livability, you almost get to the point where you're willing to make some sacrifices."

Andersen says he used to be able to talk across the street to neighbors, and now can barely hold a conversation in his own front yard because of all the traffic. As for speeding, Andersen recalls the time that police set up a radar trailer, which tells motorists how fast they're going, across from his home.

"We could see it from our living room," he says. "We watched the traffic over a weekend, and there was rarely, rarely a car going 25 mph."

Andersen says he wishes the city would install speed bumps on his street, but realizes they won't because Polk is considered a collector street. "If you want people to avoid your street and slow down, that's really the only thing that works," he says. "Other things will make people think, but only bumps make them actually slow down."

The city prefers to call them speed "humps" to distinguish between the steeper, more jarring speed bumps found in shopping center and school parking lots. But by whatever name, speed bumps and other traffic calmers can accomplish only so much in Eugene - in part because of money constraints.

Residents along more than 150 streets throughout the city have requested relief, yet the city only budgets $30,000 to $50,000 annually for traffic calming. Because of reserves, the city currently has about $125,000 it could apply to Polk, 24th and other streets in the Friendly neighborhood, Duke says.

The reasons behind Eugene's traffic problems include a "speeding epidemic" among motorists and the reality that the city is growing, traffic officials say.

On the south side of town, several neighborhoods with grid streets face a special challenge: There is no major arterial - such as Coburg Road, Belt Line Road or Interstate 105 - for commuter traffic to spill onto, so drivers instead cut through residential streets to reach their destination.

In the Friendly neighborhood, the speed bumps on Friendly Street have contributed to the problem. "The intent was to slow the traffic down, not shift it to other streets," Duke says. "But that's clearly what's happened. Putting speed bumps on a higher-volume street is something we would not do today."

Ernie Maruska lives on Tyler Street, a full four blocks west of Friendly Street. Maruska says he never considered that the speed bumps added to Friendly in 1997 would affect him.

Yet traffic on his street has doubled since then, to more than 900 a day.

The city is talking about adding speed bumps and a traffic circle to Tyler, and Maruska can hardly wait. "I'm five houses down from 28th Avenue, and many times people are shifting into fourth or fifth gear by the time they hit my house," he says.

Split opinions

But not everyone thinks more traffic calming is the answer.

Billy Lindros, a home health nurse who lives just west of Polk Street, says the city, with the encouragement of neighborhood activists, has gone overboard.

"Streets are public resources and people should be able to drive on them," he says. "In a couple of years we're going to have speed bumps on every street between Chambers and Willamette, except for the collector streets that will all have these weird, diverting, obstacle-course things."

Lindros says the city gives more credence to residents along a street than to the motorists who use it. Rather than traffic calming, the city should spend its resources on police who can enforce speed limits, he says.

Lindros says traffic volume and speeds on Polk Street, which he drives regularly, are reasonable. And he notes that traffic calming plans for Polk and 24th will mean the loss of parking spaces on both streets.

As for Friendly Street, the speed bumps may be a mistake but their removal "is never going to happen," he says. "Once they're in there, they're in there."

Some nearby residents certainly hope so.

Marv Glover, a general contractor who lives on Friendly, helped lobby for the speed bumps. They may not be perfect, but traffic calming is a trial-and-error process, and city officials and neighbors are learning as they go, he says.

"We have these devices in place, and they've been very effective," he says.

"So why not put more devices in place on other streets and not spend tax money to take out something that we know is working."

The Friendly Area Neighbors' traffic calming committee believes that some of the speed bumps on Friendly Street should be removed, says Greg Giesy, a member of the group's executive board. "I think it did the job too well," Giesy says. "It was not a well-planned-out situation in the first place."

City Councilor Bonny Bettman lives in the Friendly neighborhood and was an early advocate for traffic calming.

In the mid-1990s, she and other residents researched the topic extensively in search of a neighborhood approach involving several streets, but city officials told them in the end that it could afford only speed bumps on Friendly, she says.

Any decision to remove some of the Friendly Street bumps should fall to neighbors, Bettman says. But she supports applying speed bumps and other traffic calming techniques to other neighborhood streets.

Cities across the country are trying to preserve or re-establish urban neighborhoods, "and we don't want ours to deteriorate to the point where people say, `It's not worth it for me to live here or to invest in my home and neighborhood,' ' Bettman says. "I think the idea of traffic calming has caught on nationwide as you see growing communities like ours trying to preserve the livability of these neighborhoods."

TRAFFIC CALMING WISH LIST

Top 10 streets, as requested by residents and ranked by city:

1. Polk Street (from 24th to 28th)

2. West 24th Avenue (from Polk to Friendly)

3. Danebo Avenue (from Barger to Souza)

4. Sorrel Way (from Oakmont Way to Palomino)

5. West Eighth Avenue (from Monroe to Polk)

6. City View Street (from 18th to 27th)

7. Crest Drive (from Crest Drive to Horizon Road)

8. Hawkins Lane (from 18th to Videra)

9. Garden Way (from Harlow to Centennial)

10. Garfield and Arthur streets (from 13th to 18th)

- City of Eugene

TRAFFIC CALMING RESULTS

Friendly Street (between 24th and 28th):

Average speed before speed bumps: 30 mph

Average speed after speed bumps: 24 mph

Drivers exceeding speed limit before: 88 percent

Drivers exceeding speed limit after: 29 percent

Daily traffic volume before: 4,000 vehicles

Daily traffic volume after: 1,800 vehicles

East 33rd Avenue (between Hilyard and Donald):

Average speed before traffic calming: 32.5 mph

Average speed after traffic calming: 27 mph

Drivers exceeding speed limit before: 97 percent

Drivers exceeding speed limit after: 68 percent

Daily traffic volume before: 3,275 vehicles

Daily traffic volume after: 3,450 vehicles

- City of Eugene

CAPTION(S):

Donica Beath waters plants in a "bump-out" on East 33rd Avenue. Neighbors worked with the city to come up with an alternative to speed bumps.