AgdaPkt 2016-09-12 Closed and Joint SA PFA

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to evaluate and construct these traffic calming improvements exceed City resources to process the requests and manage the projects. The new guidelines will provide a way to prioritize the requests to make sure locations with the greatest needs will be implemented first. It will also provide a clear process for residents to understand the commitment and effort needed by both the residents and staff to implement a traffic calming program in their neighborhood. The proposed policy is for specific use on residential streets. Larger streets like arterials and major collectors will not be evaluated under the proposed policy. They will be evaluated on an individual basis and require extensive study and analysis. At its March 8th meeting, the Complete Streets Advisory Committee provided feedback to staff on the draft policy’s scoring criteria and the traffic calming process. The Committee recommended several revisions to the proposed policy update. Staff incorporated these recommendations and brought a revised policy document to the Committee at its June 14th meeting for their review. The Complete Streets Advisory Committee reviewed the attached proposed Policy and Guidelines for Residential Traffic Calming and recommended the City Council approve the proposed document. ANALYSIS The current “Policy and Guidelines for Speed Hump Use” establishes that speed is the main criteria to determine the use of speed humps to calm traffic. However, there are now other traffic variables that have the potential to affect neighborhood quality of life. It is for this reason that many cities use two main criteria to identify the need for traffic calming measures (speed humps, traffic circles, bulb-outs, medians, etc.): speed and traffic volume. The proposed policy establishes speed, volume, and collision history as the main criteria to determining the need for traffic calming. This provides more flexibility to identify the true impacts in a neighborhood and address them. The measure of speed typically used is the 85th percentile speed (85% of vehicles drive at or below this speed) as it is the basis for setting speed limits in the State of California. Common thresholds for traffic calming on streets with a 25 mph speed limit range from 30 to 33 mph. Redwood City’s current policy sets it at 33 mph. For streets with a 30 mph speed limit, the threshold ranges from 35 to 37 mph. Redwood City’s current speed hump policy does not identify specific thresholds for streets with a speed limit over 25 mph. The proposed policy sets the speed threshold at 30 mph. The other criterion is an assessment of the traffic volume on the street. Some residential streets carry a significant amount of traffic but under the current policy they do not qualify for speed humps, since speed humps are limited to streets with less than 3,000 6.3.B. - Page 2