CITY of ALBUQUERQUE
TWENTY THIRD COUNCIL
COUNCIL BILL NO. R-19-201 ENACTMENT NO. ________________________
SPONSORED BY: Cynthia D. Borrego
RESOLUTION
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Requiring The Department Of Municipal Development To Install Speed Humps On Dover Street Northwest To Improve Public Safety (Borrego)
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WHEREAS, the residents of Dover Street Northwest between McMahon Boulevard and Braniff Avenue in 2018 petitioned for and were granted a Traffic Calming Study through the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program (NTMP); and
WHEREAS, Dover Street is a residential street fronted by homes and yards with a sidewalk located behind the curb of the roadway and it is intersected by five courts and is an access that connects streets north and east of Dover to McMahon. The roadway is on a hill sloping from north to south which can cause motorists to unknowingly speed; and
WHEREAS, The NTMP Qualifying study recorded that the 85th percentile speed of vehicles traveling on the Dover roadway exceeded 32 miles per hour. This is detrimental to public safety. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration of the United States Department of Transportation reports that when a vehicle traveling over 30 miles per hour strikes a pedestrian there is a 70% greater chance the crash will result in pedestrian fatality or serious pedestrian injury than if the pedestrian was struck at 25 miles per hour, the speed limit for a local street; and
WHEREAS, in its current configuration the NTMP requires that for a street to qualify for traffic calming two of four criteria must be met. The NTMP evaluation of Dover Street determined that traffic on the road only achieved one NTMP evaluation criterion of speeding. Therefore Dover did not warrant traffic calming through the NTMP Program; and
WHEREAS, since the implementation of the current edition of the NTMP Manual, few roads with speeding and cut through traffic issues have qualified for the NTMP Program. In response, The City is rewriting the qualifying criteria for traffic calming measures to ensure that roadways where traffic creates safety and quality of life issues are eligible for traffic calming; and
WHEREAS, using the traffic calming qualifying criteria proposed for the next version of the NTMP Manual, Dover Street would qualify in that a roadway would only require 85% of the traffic on the roadway to be speeding to receive traffic calming measures; and
WHEREAS, According to the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program Manager, Dover is not a primary emergency vehicle access route and installing traffic calming devices on the street would not impede emergency vehicle access to the neighborhood.
BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL, THE GOVERNING BODY OF THE CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE:
Section 1. The City Council of Albuquerque, acting in its duty to protect the public’s health and welfare, directs The Department of Municipal Development to install speed humps on Dover Street Northwest between McMahon Boulevard and Braniff Avenue by June 30, 2020.
Section 2. Funding is appropriated from Council Set-aside for District 5.