As part of its participation in the National Complete Streets Coalition’s Safe Streets Academy, the City of South Bend will install demonstrations of neighborhood-scale traffic calming measures in the Near Northwest Neighborhood on Tuesday, April 17. The demonstrations are temporary installations meant to reduce speeding and will be in place for 30 to 90 days. If these installations are successful based on the data collected, they may be made permanent. The City will be testing three different neighborhood traffic calming measures:
1) Bump out/pavement reduction reduces the width of the street by widening sidewalks or introducing medians, forcing motorists to slow down when driving on narrower streets. This measure can reduce traffic speed by 2 – 4 mph.
2) Chicanes are a serpentine curve in the road designed to slow traffic. Typically built at a 45-degree angle, chicanes alternate from one side of the street to the other. This measure can reduce traffic speed by 6 – 9 mph.
3) Neighborhood traffic circles are circles of varying diameter formed by curbs that motorists must drive around, or in the case of longer vehicles, motorists can drive slowly onto and over a mountable concrete curb forming the circle. This measure is estimated to reduce speed by 10+ mph.
Based on neighborhood input and traffic considerations, the following five locations in the Near Northwest Neighborhood have been identified to feature demonstration projects:
– Lindsey Street, east of Sherman Avenue: chicane
– Lindsey Street, west of Cushing Street: chicane
– Riverside Drive & Hudson Avenue: neighborhood traffic circle (art installation/painting to be completed on Saturday, April 21)
– Riverside Drive & California/Leland Avenues: bump out/pavement reduction
– Van Buren Street & Cottage Grove Avenue: neighborhood traffic circle
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