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Slow Down, You Move Too Fast: Bulbs, Knobs and Circles

Urban planners call all this "traffic calming." Like Bend, hundreds of cities and towns, mostly in the West and Southwest but also in fast-growing communities in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia and on Long Island, are adopting them. They are a big departure from conventional traffic lights, stop signs and speed bumps, and often supplant them. Drivers can maneuver long stretches of Bend without a red light.

Planners say traffic calming can enliven pedestrian traffic and mitigate the effects of sprawl. Local officials say they cannot stop the freight train of development, but in the interests of safety and civility, they turn to these devices to cool down its cargo of charging S.U.V.'s.

"Traffic, we hear from the citizens of Bend, is probably their No. 1 priority," David A. Hales, the city manager, said.

Traffic calming has its detractors. Bumps, bulbs and skinny streets trouble firefighters, who cannot race through them as they can through lights. But the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Washington says calming prevents serious collisions.

One institute study two years ago looked at intersections where roundabouts replaced traffic lights. "There was a 75 percent reduction in injury crashes," Russell Rader, a spokesman for the institute, said. "They also increased traffic flow and reduced delays by 20 percent."

Robert Woodward, 63, artist, writer, outdoorsman and mayor of Bend in the late 1990's, grimaces at the city's growth and the loss of mountain biking trails. A migrant from California more than two decades ago, he calls the Californians rushing here lately "the locusts of our time" and the homes of many, with garages poking toward the street, "snout houses." He is all for taming traffic.

Mr. Woodward takes a drive through the roundabouts, including two so close together they are called a figure eight. Already community focal points, some are adorned with installations of public art. He said locals call one of a flat red Phoenix mounted atop a pole the "flaming chicken." Circling another, he passes big cast-aluminum letters of the compass's S, then E, N and W. The letters cause comment because the highly stylized N resembles an X.

He heads out meandering Mount Washington Drive, where most new development is concentrated. It is wide enough for four lanes but has been maneuvered into two. Grass-and-shrub-covered medians thwart passing and U-turns. White sidelines painted well into the road, in part for bicycles, create the illusion of a road too narrow for speeding.

Mr. Woodward takes a street of gently sloped "speed undulators," heirs of the old speed bumps that jolt cars like inverted potholes. "The biggest issue now," he said, "is cut-through traffic," the cars sweeping off arterial streets onto side streets without bulbs and bumps. "We need more of them just to calm those drivers down."

Traffic calming is paid for and inspired locally, so it takes many forms. Starting in the 1970's, Berkeley, Calif., broke down its grid of streets by putting up barriers to force turns at intersections. Over the years, Portland, Ore., perhaps the most traffic-becalmed big city, has installed 1,216 devices, including 836 gently sloped bumps, 71 small roundabouts, or traffic circles, and 60 pedestrian refuges, or islands in the middle of busy streets. "We have 200 more unfunded projects," said Mary Volm, spokeswoman for the city's transportation department.

In Bellevue, Wash., engineers have installed speed humps with chokers on each side. A study reported by the federal Institute of Transportation Engineers found a 31 percent decline in speed on one street and a 6 percent reduction in traffic. Gwinnett County, Ga., uses "tables" -- wide humps with flat tops. They have cut speeds 16 to 21 percent. A few cities have installed "chicanes" -- alternating bulbs along streets that become slow slalom courses.

The Seattle suburb Kirkland is among the most pedestrian friendly. In crosswalks between intersections, it is embedding orange lights that flash when a pedestrian enters. Earlier, Kirkland introduced "ped flags." At 20 crosswalks, pedestrians pluck orange flags from holders on signposts on one side, wave them as they make their way and replace them on the other side. "Our city council is real excited about that," Patricia Stell, Bend's recorder, said.

Some Bend residents have yet to be convinced of the usefulness of calming devices. "The roundabouts are so tight, you wait while cars in the middle are trying to figure out what to do," said Frank Weis, executive vice president of the Bank of the Cascades, who was having lunch at a pub on bulb-dense Wall Street downtown. "It slows down traffic, O.K. It slows it down to a crawl."

City officials attribute Bend's plunge into traffic calming to a dispute a few years ago with developers. To approve plans for house building on the west side, the city asked developers to include calming designs in the streets they would lay. Mr. Woodward said construction stopped until Michael P. Hollern, one of Bend's biggest developers, reflected on his trips through Europe and proclaimed, "I like roundabouts."

Mr. Hollern's latest venture is North West Crossing, which is rising around a roundabout. The houses are built along skinny streets with bulbed intersections.

"It's very much intended for low-volume local traffic, driving 15 or 20 miles an hour," said Kirk Schueler, president of Mr. Hollern's company, the Brooks Resources Corporation.

Bend's Fire Chief, Larry J. Langston, is skeptical. His 10-foot-4-inch-wide, 35,000-pound trucks, he said, have scant room to maneuver and set up. He has made test runs, he said. "They're pushing the envelope," he said, "but so far, so good."

© Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company