Description

Drivers routinely speed on residential Barnett St. between Willard and Fountain. Much of this is cut-through traffic trying to avoid the light at Fountain St. and Forest Rd. While cut-through traffic in and of itself is arguably OK, the speeding is not. Beside the traffic noise of fast-moving cars (often 40-45 mph), there are about a dozen kids under the age of 7 just on the half-block closest to Willard - and lots more in a one-block radius - that routinely play near the street. This is a serious safety and quality of life issue.

A few possible solutions to slow people down would be:
1) Install two nice big asphalt speed humps (rather than speed bumps, which are shorter and can be very loud when cars pass over). Speed humps do not cost a lot and work very well in substantially lowering speeds - it's an easy fix for the speeding and would probably also help cut down on the cut-through traffic. The only downside as far as I can tell is that snowplows and in-street bicyclists have to get used to them. See photo.
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2) Alternate street parking from one side to the other once or twice down the block, and bump-out or stripe the transitions with chicanes. The bump-outs could create some nice new planting areas, which neighbors on this block would likely and gladly take on maintenance of. Building them is relatively expensive b/c of the curbing, but they could be striped first as a cheap experiment. See photo in next post.
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3) Just allow cars to park on both sides of Barnett, creating what's called a "queuing street" - cars have to pull over and wait to pass one another. This latter approach is a new standard for low-volume residential streets in Portland, OR and is the defacto standard on older streets all over the world. This would be cheapest - just some new parking signs. Barnett is roughly 27' wide, just between the 26-28' wide standard for a two-sided parking queuing street.

I look forward to hearing other possible solutions.