Last week, coincidentally on my birthday, I peered out my front door to see an explanation for why orange cones had appeared near the curb a day or two prior. City workers were busy installing a speed bump.
Snapping a photo and emailing a family member, I wrote, “Look what a nice birthday gift the city of Hartford gave me today.” After all, the speed bump is literally right outside my front door, and I had been musing about the virtues of such things in slowing down traffic.
One street over, the speed bumps seem to proclaim how seriously those residents consider the speed limit and the lives of the elderly, children and pets. Walking there recently, I had wondered what people have to do to get a speed bump, and how controversial they are.
In a recent post on his Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space blog, Washington, DC resident Richard Layman wrote about how he used to support the idea of speed bumps, but after seeing them installed in a heavily-trafficked area near his workplace, his support waned. The speed bumps slowed down mass transit—in this case, the bus—which then caused commuters to give up on that mode of transportation, apparently opting instead for their cars. Giving up the gains of mass transit for the gains of slowed-down traffic didn’t seem worth it to Layman.
Toward the end of the afternoon on the day our speed bump was installed, I returned from an errand to find the installation complete. Heading toward my back yard, my neighbor’s voice called out from his back porch. “How do you like our new lawn ornament?” he asked sarcastically.
Having spent the day mostly without irony to that point, and caught in the midst of wheeling my automated trash bin from the sidewalk back to its usual location at the rear of the house, it took me a moment to catch up to what he was saying. I’m too literal: the speed bump isn’t really on the lawn.
“Oh,” I said, after a pause. “I think it’s great.”
“Really?” he asked. “I can’t tell if there is a hint of sarcasm in your voice.” There wasn’t, but I suppose such a delivery could also be considered very deadpan.
“No, I’m not being sarcastic,” I replied, trying to see through the giant leaves of my numerous, overgrown catalpa trees to where my neighbor was standing. “I really think it’s great. Why, you don’t like it so much?”
I heard my neighbor describe how the speed bump might not be justified, because in part, the local fire station and police substation use our street as a main thoroughfare to get to the North End. The unspoken implication seemed to be that the North End was a popular place for emergency vehicles to go, so they would need to be able to get there fast and often. I listened intently, nodding and taking in both the context and the subtext and the plain old text of what he was saying and not-saying.
“There haven’t been that many problems with speeding cars on our street,” he went on. “There was only the one incident in seven years, that I know of, when an elderly man was hit, in the dark, by a police cruiser without its lights on—going to the North End,” he added.
His characterization of this incident stood in contrast to the last time we had an exchange about traffic. Introducing ourselves to each other, my neighbor warned me about traffic sometimes zooming along way too fast. “There was one time when an older man was killed—he got hit, in the dark, by a police cruiser without its lights on—going to the North End,” he warned. “So you have to watch out and be careful, keep an eye on the kids when they’re in the front yard.” He said it was a long time ago, but still, it could happen again.
I tried to reassure my neighbor by telling him about the neighborhood I moved from. At my old place, I lived close to a fire station, and near-misses were a regular part of life while walking my kids to school. The close calls could be attributed not just to speeding fire trucks unexpectedly zooming around corners, but also to nearly everyone driving the streets. Our street in Hartford is wider and more open, and without potholes, apparently encouraging drivers to go even faster. Not that I advocate for letting potholes proliferate—but they do have a way of slowing down the nuisance drivers.
In the face of a new speed bump, the man who got hit so tragically some years ago was now just one incident in a string of years without, and the need for fire trucks to go fast was perhaps more important, in my neighbor’s view.
While I’m in favor of emergency vehicles being able to get where they’re going fast, I’m not sure it’s more important than the much more frequent need for plain old safety with all the other traffic happening the rest of the time. A speed bump regulates it all, 24 hours a day, and while it’s a bit of an ugly-looking crutch, it’s effective in slowing traffic. It also provides a bit of free entertainment: my kids enjoy it.
My neighbor said he thinks that if the Hartford police would just do their job, and ticket people for speeding, we wouldn’t need speed bumps. Then he told me about a UConn cop who stations himself on the street during the school year and just points his radar gun at people all day and writes tickets. He really likes that guy, and told me he always waves hello and is friendly to him, because apparently he’s doing what cops should do.
I never got to explain why I like the speed bump, but that’s okay. It’s not going anywhere, regardless of what I think.
A couple of days ago, I heard sirens and rushed to the window to watch as the fire trucks dealt with the bump. Indeed, it does slow them down. I thought perhaps they’d just zoom over it, maybe even launch into the air a bit, fly even faster to their destination, but not so: just like every other vehicle, the fire truck drivers slowed down, ambled over the bump, and sped onward. Too bad, I thought. Either they’ll have to find a better route or the North End will have to wait a little longer.
