THE INFLUENCE OF TRAFFIC CALMING DEVICES UPON FIRE VEHICLE TRAVEL TIMES

The City of Portland is well known for its high quality of life and the efforts that have been made to maintain and enhance neighborhood livability. Part of this success is a result of the city's Traffic Calming Program which has been effective in minimizing the impacts of traffic on residential streets. The program's primary goal is to reduce overall traffic speeds on residential streets and in school zones. Traffic circles and speed bumps are the program's most effective tools. To date, 65 traffic circles and approximately 300 speed bumps have been installed on numerous neighborhood collector and local service streets throughout the city. Unfortunately, traffic calming devices that reduce overall vehicular speeds can also impact some emergency response vehicles by increasing their response times. Given the number of existing and planned traffic calming devices, the City of Portland's Fire Bureau has become more concerned in recent years about the cumulative impact of these devices on their ability to respond quickly to emergencies. Neighborhoods are also struggling with how to best address the problem of speeding traffic on their neighborhood streets while not significantly reducing response times for emergency service providers. There are two purposes for this paper. The first is to show how traffic calming devices affect fire vehicle travel times and to describe the testing that quantified the relationship between the two. The second purpose is to describe the City of Portland's planning-based approach to addressing the conflict between traffic calming and emergency service response.