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RESOLUTION R-1819-44: A RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NORMAN, OKLAHOMA, APPROPRIATING $20,000 FROM THE CAPITAL FUND BALANCE TO BE USED FOR A TRAFFIC CALMING PROJECT ON HAMDEN AVENUE.
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BACKGROUND: In 2002, in response to a multitude of citizen requests to "do something" about speeders in their neighborhoods, the City Council decided to develop and fund a Traffic Calming Program. Staff researched the available literature and looked at the traffic calming practices of many communities nationwide.
In 2003, the City published its own Neighborhood Traffic Management and Calming Program document and did a pilot calming project in the Cambridge Subdivision. Since then, engineered traffic calming devices have been constructed in 51 neighborhoods city wide where streets have qualified with minimum speeds and traffic volumes, and neighborhoods have passed support petitions.
Since its inception, the program has constructed 217 speed tables and 15 traffic circles. The program has been very popular and requests from neighborhoods have continued to pour in. In FYE 2008, there were 22 neighborhoods that had fully gone through the process and were vying for part of that year's budget of $160,000. Since only 10 of the 22 calming projects could be funded, the City Council decided to appropriate funding to allow all 22 of them, which included 100 speed tables and 2 traffic circles, to be built.
This proliferation of calming devices, coupled with negative feedback of drivers from peripheral areas who used those streets, emergency responders who expressed concerns about the devices, and public transit officials concerned about accelerated wear to their vehicles, prompted the City Council Oversight Committee to examine the Traffic Calming Program and to recommend changes to improve it. The Oversight Committee looked at all aspects of the program: its effectiveness, its qualifying criteria, its cost, the neighborhood meeting process, the petition pro...
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