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'Traffic Calming Devices:' City Seeing Increase In Demand For Speed Humps

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - It's a term you may have not heard before but it's one the City of Pittsburgh is using in order to address the problem of speeding.

"Traffic Calming Devices."

Better known as speed humps.

They are rising out of more and more streets in Pittsburgh. Last year, they were put in along Beechwood Boulevard and drivers were treating the street like an obstacle course, swerving into bike lanes in an attempt to avoid them altogether.

It wasn't just one or two drivers, as KDKA's John Shumway observed in December, many drivers were taking this approach.

The City of Pittsburgh's Director of Mobility and Infrastructure Karina Ricks said they took action.

"We extended them across the bike lanes so folks can't avoid them as they were before," she said.

Has that action been effective?

"We've seen quite a bit more compliance with the addition of the traffic calming devices," Ricks added. "Beechwood Boulevard had about 89% non-compliance with the speed restrictions, we got that down, now we're about 65% compliance. There are still some stubborn Pittsburghers who insist on exceeding the speed limit but more closer to compliance than we were before."

Now, the city is seeing a lot of demand for some form of traffic calming.

The city responds to requests and petitions from residents of neighborhoods who have complaints about excessive speed.

Studies are done and then if there's a problem, the city will act.

An example of that is Grandview Avenue.

Last year, the city put speed humps in place to see if they would be effective. They concluded that they were and recently made them permanent.

Ricks said that a lot of residents have reached out.

"We do speed studies, we do volume studies when there is evidence of significant non-compliance with speed," she said.

WATCH: City Of Pittsburgh Planning To Add More Speed Humps

So, where will these new speed humps go?

"We have currently 86 streets that have completed petitions for speed studies, the demand far outstrips the resources that we have," Ricks added. "We don't want to put these devices in what we want is for people to follow the rules and drive responsibly."

Ricks said that Black Street, Mission Street, Venture Street, and another section of Beechwood Boulevard are being considered to add speed humps.

Residents have said that the city's claim that speed humps do slow most drivers down.

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