The city of Austin restarted its traffic-calming program in late August after a one-month pause to address residents’ concerns over a lack of communication on upcoming projects and an increase in devices being installed.

“I think people are seeing [the program] now more like a machine, and we’re addressing speed issues,” Austin Transportation Department Director Rob Spillar said. “And people are stopping and saying, ‘Is this what we really want to do?’”

Previously the city would install speed humps, which are rounded, raised devices made of concrete. At a cost of $13,000 each, Spillar said speed humps were expensive, and the city could only install about eight per year.

With new technology the city switched to black rubber devices called speed cushions that cost significantly less, he said. The city now does about 20 speed cushion projects per year.

“Now we’re getting really efficient in getting these in, and I think it’s taking people by surprise,” he said.

The traffic-calming program is geared toward slowing down drivers on residential streets, but Spillar said the city received requests for devices and installed them on collector streets that funnel traffic from neighborhood streets to more major roadways.

District 10 Council Member Alison Alter led the charge to ask the department to pause the program in mid-July to revisit how it handles controlling speed on these collector streets.

An Aug. 10 city memo outlined several changes to the program, including more scrutiny for collector streets and minor arterials. Council members will also receive notification about projects in their district, and Spillar said staffers will alert drivers via signs in areas being considered for traffic calming.

Last year the city had planned to install speed cushions in the Travis Country neighborhood in Southwest Austin on Travis Country Circle and Republic of Texas Boulevard, but Spillar said residents asked the city to try other measures first. Instead, in 2016, the city added striped medians, striped buffer lanes and a dynamic speed display sign that shows drivers their speed.

“We tried to change the driver’s expectation as they entered the more residential areas,” Spillar said.

The city has been monitoring the effectiveness of those speed-mitigation measures, and they are helping to reduce residents’ speeding, Spillar said. Now the city is considering installing permanent concrete medians should funding become available.

“I think we’re going to step back and bring some of the lessons learned from that application into these collector, arterials approaches,” Spillar said.

Austin’s traffic-calming program, called Local Area Traffic Management, dates back to the 1980s and was last revamped in 2012.

“As Austin congestion levels started to increase and because this region doesn’t have a lot of parallel main roads, whether it’s highways or main roads, I think the community suffered pressure by trips diverting to streets that may not have been appropriate for those trips, so that’s cut-through traffic,” Spillar said of the need for the program.

Previously homeowners and neighborhood associations had to approve the installation of traffic-calming devices. However, Spillar said council members became frustrated when the votes stalled device implementation.

Now a resident who lives on the street in the area in which he or she request a device fills out an application, and the city handles the traffic study to count the number of vehicles speeding. If the 85th percentile speed is 3 mph above the posted speed limit, the project would be eligible, said Mario Porras, an engineer with the transportation department.

Eligible projects then require the resident who requested traffic calming to get the signatures of residents who live in the project limits to sign off on the project. The more signatures gathered means a higher score on the criteria list, which also includes the number of vehicles speeding and excessively speeding, proximity to schools and parks, and availability of sidewalks.

The main reason for slowing down drivers to the posted speed limit is to reduce the risk of pedestrian deaths in traffic incidents.

A study included in the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to eliminate traffic-related deaths, showed the risk of a pedestrian dying or being seriously injured in a traffic incident doubles when vehicles travel from
30 to 35 mph.

“The agenda of the city is not to slow everybody down,” he said. “The agenda is to address the risk of severe and fatal crashes.”