MID-BLOCK SPEED CONTROL: CHICANES AND SPEED HUMPS

As the City of Seattle's arterial routes get congested, motorists look for quicker routes, often choosing to use non-arterial streets through residential neighborhoods. This has led to increased demand from communities for traffic calming devices to be installed on their neighborhood streets. Seattle has had an active Neighborhood Traffic Control Program since the early 70's. To date, the City has installed over 700 traffic control devices, mostly traffic circles. Although a traffic circle may be the preferred traffic calming device, there are some locations where traffic circles are not a viable option. At these locations, Seattle has looked to other devices for mid-block speed control to address community concerns. Two of these devices are chicanes and speed humps. To date, Seattle has installed chicanes at thirteen locations and speed humps at eight locations. Using information gathered from case studies, this paper will present information on Seattle's experience with chicanes and speed humps.