High hopes and humps add up to costly repair bill for city
Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Bill Hutchins
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EMC News - It was a small, but expensive learning curve.
Some local speed humps similar to the one pictured above, have been shaved down from their original height at a cost of $25,000 to the city
A two-centimetre mistake on the height of 14 speed humps cost city taxpayers more than $25,000 to fix.
"It was a bit of a learning process. We went through many speed hump installations over the past couple of years," explained mayor Mark Gerretsen.
With residential support, the city installed 56 traffic calming speed humps on eight local streets in 2011. It was one of the most wide-ranging traffic calming solutions ever adopted by the city.
But the race to raise the pavement came with an unexpected price.
The faulty design specifications caused construction confusion and complaints from motorists. It was revealed that 14 humps were accidentally raised 10 centimetres off the surface of the roadway instead of the intended standard height of 8 centimetres.
The same contractor was called on to fix the problem in late 2011 by shaving the tops off the 14 speed humps at a cost of more than $50,000. At the time, city officials said it was a construction mistake and the contractor would pay 100 percent of the cost.
However, officials recently clarified that the repairs were cost-shared because the hump dimensions provided by the city were not specific enough. The city agreed to pay 50 percent of the repairs, or $25,140.
"We acknowledge the specifications that described the shape of those humps might have been a little too vague," said Mark Van Buren, the city's director of engineering.
Mayor Gerretsen says future speed humps will be equal in shape and size, and he makes no apologies for the technical mix-up. "We now have solid specifications from our engineering department as to how they (speed humps) are to be constructed."
Van Buren, whose department oversees the city's $200,000-a-year traffic calming budget, agrees it's been a learning process. "What we're trying to achieve with the speed humps the city has constructed, and any future ones, is consistency."
He added: "We believe we've got the right shape, height and profile for those speed humps now."
Van Buren says a new list of Kingston streets that may require traffic calming measures will be brought to council for action "very shortly." But he suggested the city may be easing off the speed hump approach as the main method to slow traffic through residential neighbourhoods.
"We will take a more balanced approach with a combination of speed humps, curb extensions or mini-traffic circles," he noted.
The move away from speed humps as the prime traffic slowing tool may stem from mounting complaints within the city fleet itself. Bus drivers, fire fighters and snow plow operators have quietly grumbled that constantly slowing down to get over raised sections of pavement is a nuisance that can, in the case of emergency vehicles, slow their response times.
Van Buren says while most residents who live on streets with speed humps like them, he acknowledges the humps are not without critics.
"There are comments that range all over the map as far as speed humps are concerned."
He added: "We will work with Kingston Transit and continue to explore ways to achieve traffic calming and allow for the sufficient passage of transit buses and emergency vehicles."
The city once experimented with gaps in speed humps to assist municipal and other emergency vehicles get over them quickly, but it was abandoned in favour of a continuously raised pavement design that stretches the entire width of the road.
The mayor says traffic calming is here to stay because it's what many residents want. At one point, speeding vehicles were considered the number one complaint that councillors received from constituents.
Gerretsen added: "Traffic calming is extremely important in the city, especially on collector and residential roads."
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