The humble speed hump is a proven winner when it comes to, in the terminology of transportation geeks, "traffic calming." They compel leadfoots to slow down when driving through residential neighborhoods where children often frolic. Emergency responders sometimes don't like them as they can interfere with fire engines and police cars getting to where they need to go in a hurry. But residents love 'em. And the residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts, are finally getting their humps.
Cambridge could use some good news, as Harvard University has been hammered by the Trump Administration. Bloomberg has a lengthy story about all things speed hump, but for our purposes we're zeroing in on the "speed hump bonanza" coming to Cambridge. The town's transportation commissioner says 20-30 of the raised hunks of asphalt infrastructure are on the way. And that's just the beginning: she also said Cambridge will build as many as it can fund. Just don't tell Sean Duffy.
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A Cheap Way To Control Speeders
I recently cruised through a section of New Jersey that was literally crammed with speed humps (I call them "speed bumps," but no matter). The suspension on my 20-year-old Honda Element did not enjoy the journey, but there's no doubt that the humps drastically reduced my velocity. As Bloomberg points out, they cost only a few thousand bucks to install — less if municipalities go for the bolt-down plastic versions instead — and they flat-out get it done. Streets once plagued by speeders witness the problem vanish almost immediately.
They prevent crashes, smooth traffic flows, and avoid deaths and injuries. People who think about this stuff all day long adore speed humps because their cost-benefit analysis is almost too good to be true. But all it takes is hitting a speed hump at excessive speed one time, and enduring the unpleasant effects, to change driver behavior. They are so good at it, in fact, that residents request them: Bloomberg reports that St. Petersburg, Florida installs 30-40 every year.
Boston Set The Speed-Hump Standard
Cambridge has trailed Boston in embracing the speed hump. Beantown has been adding speed humps since 2016, and apparently Cambridge residents were envious. Speed humps do fall into a general category of construction that helps defend pedestrians against cars, and they need defending. Some years back, I reviewed a book by Sam Schwartz, the guy who invented the term "gridlock," and I learned that 4 billion people have been injured, and 70 million killed, by cars through 2018.
Schwartz argued that walkers, bikers, and so on had surrendered the streets to automobiles in the 20th century. They didn't even put up a fight. Enter speed humps and their popularity. They might not ban cars from residential streets, but they do restore some sense of safety and control to people. Or, as a source in the Bloomberg story who guided the speed-hump rollout on Boston put it, they allow residents to exert dominance over their roadways. "It's about punishing those other people who are using their street," she said. Who knew speed humps could be so tough?
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