Speed humps a popular request

Denise Cardinal

Monday, June 30, 1997 | 4:28 a.m.

Phil Coutant is fed up with the cars driving 45 mph down his residential street. And he's not alone. Neighborhood activists throughout the city are asking the traffic division to slow down the cars on their streets by installing speed humps.

The traffic on Coutant's street, Tonopah Drive between Alta Drive and Sunland Avenue, was out of control, he said. Several hundred cars a day sped through the residential neighborhood, he said, almost always shattering the 25 mph speed limit.

"I kept on thinking to myself, one of these days someone is going to get killed," said Coutant, who has lived on Tonopah Drive since 1981.

Most of the neighborhoods asking for the speed humps are near a major intersection, like Coutant's, which is near Rancho Drive and Alta. As growing traffic clogs the main streets, commuters take as many shortcuts as possible -- often through a neighborhood. Some residential streets, including Coutant's, have more than 500 cars a day traveling on them.

So the neighborhoods turn to the city for help. After talking to officials at the traffic division, Coutant was told that a study of the traffic had to be done. Cars were counted and speeds were monitored, and at a Traffic and Parking Commission meeting, the division said the street didn't meet the criteria necessary to install a speed hump.

Discouraged, but not defeated, Coutant went to his councilman, Michael McDonald, who allowed the matter to be heard before the City Council. The vote was unanimous to allow speed humps on his street.

But some city officials aren't sure it was the right decision. Since the first speed humps were installed more than two years ago, the traffic division gets at least one request a month for them. And too often the applicants aren't even near qualification.

"Some will apply and they have less than a hundred cars on their street," said Dick Goecke, head of the city's Traffic Engineering Division. "If they think that's an application for a speed hump, then we'd have them all over."

Speed humps are also a problem for emergency vehicles. If a commuter needs to slow to 25 mph to get over a speed hump comfortably, so does an ambulance or a fire truck. And in the case of the speed bumps on Tonopah, the local fire station will have to change its emergency route after the humps are installed.

"We empathize with the neighborhoods," said the city's deputy fire chief, Bill Young. "But it slows us down."

Even some of the neighborhoods that have had the speed humps installed are less than pleased with the results.

"They're just noisier when they go over it," said Fred Sylvia, a resident of Campbell Street, which has several humps installed on it. "I don't find anyone slowing down."

Studies, however, show that the speed humps work. Research done by Tapan and Sue Datta from Wayne State University looked at six different Las Vegas roads where the speed humps were installed. According to the study, in every case the average speed decreased by at least 6 mph. In some cases, such as on Clarice Avenue, the average speed decreased by 12 mph.