Will
Route One get rumble strips whether we want – or need – them?
By
Will Collette
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| Route One paving (from the Charlestown Police Facebook page) |
Based
on the long list of people who have submitted comments to the Charlestown Town
Council and who will probably want to speak at the Monday, June 8 Council
meeting, Charlestown has itself another hot issue – rumble strips along Route One.
Rumble strips are those annoying strips of concrete (or grooves in the asphalt) that line
some roadways to make a jarring noise whenever a distracted or sleepy driver
runs over them. Sometimes, they simply function as a guide to keep
you within a lane, like those installed at many turn-arounds along Route One.
They are loud on purpose to jolt the driver who crosses them.
That’s
exactly what the fuss was about when RIDOT installed them along Carolina Back
Road north of the junction with Route 2. Local residents complained about the
jarring noises that sometimes woke them up at night. Those rumble strips were
installed because the federal rural road money for the repaving job came with
the mandate to install rumble strips.
On
February 23, there was a special Town Council meeting with DOT for residents to
air grievances. According
to the minutes, DOT explained the Carolina Back Road strips were installed
to comply with the High Risk Rural Road funding and there was some data to
support the need. The question is whether the right kind of strips were
installed.
But
now, DOT is considering whether to install more rumble strips along Route 1 in
Charlestown, even though there is no federal mandate to do so. I’ve gotten a
lot of reaction from readers who oppose installation of the rumble strips along
Route 1.
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| These rumble strips in Little Compton are causing an uproar (source: EastBayRI) |
I
live right on Route 1 myself. While I think that those of us who live on or
near Route 1 can hardly claim that we never expected the highway to be so
noisy, unless we moved in decades ago before Post Road was converted into a
high-speed, four-lane highway.
Even though Cathy and I knew Route 1 was going to be
noisy, we were still surprised at just how noisy summer can get (we bought the
house during winter).
But,
we figured, that’s part of living in a beach town that gets very
busy in the summer.
The issue at hand is whether it makes sense to worsen an already noisy environment by adding a new noise source without conducting a
decent cost-benefit analysis or exploring alternatives.
I
asked Charlestown Police Chief Jeffrey Allen for his views on installing rumble
strips and here’s what he said:
“I have no data concerning rumble strips. They were installed by DOT [along 112] without involving the town in anyway. Personally and professionally I think they are a good idea, but I don't live on a road that has them. I think they are good because there have been many issues state wide involving bad motor vehicle accidents as a result of distracted drivers. The issue of texting and smart phone use has changed everything as far has how people drive today. As a person who runs along the roadway I like the fact that the road I am running on has a way of waking up a distracted driver and/or alerting me that I need to get out of the way or get run over.”
I
don’t disagree with anything the chief says here. However, we do live in a world
where virtually no public policy or spending decision aims at achieving a zero
risk factor (not that rumble strips guarantee zero risk). We don’t use zero
risk when figuring out what to do with toxic waste, chemicals in foods,
effectiveness of medicines, the safety of cars, etc.
When
it comes to spending highway money, I would much rather see every available
nickel put into preventing our bridges and overpasses from collapsing – Rhode
Island, as Gov. Raimondo recently reminded us, has the nation’s worst rated
bridges for structural integrity.
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| To me, this is a greater public safety need than putting rumble strips on Route One in Charlestown. |
I
choose bridge spending over rumble strips in an area where there is no substantial
data to support their need because we can be pretty sure that a bridge collapse
will happen sooner rather than later. And when the inevitable occurs, there is the high potential of mass
casualties, millions in property damage and massive disruption.
Charlestown
just recently completed the installation of red light cameras at the
intersections of Route One and West Beach and East Beach Roads.
Because the
Town Council made a big mistake in choosing the contractor for the system – a Swedish
company with a Florida headquarters that Council Boss Tom Gentz thought was a
Rhode Island-based company, all evidence to the contrary – the system is still not set up to hand out $85
red-light running tickets.
However,
that system is generating warnings. According to Chief Allen, 70 warnings were
sent out during the month of April when motorists tripped one of the four
cameras covering the two intersections. That comes to 0.6 citations per camera,
per day well short of the Sensys projections for the system.
According
to Sensys, they expected that each camera would generate
10-12 “events” per day. Since the cameras actually went on line at the
beginning of this year, they are issuing only about one-twentieth (1/20th)
of the number of camera captures that they would need to make their budget,
provided of course they can ever figure out how to get the state traffic
tribunal to honor the tickets.
It doesn't take a financial genius to see that Sensys's business plan in Charlestown is not working out.
Two
points here: one is that the actual numbers show that red-light running is far
less of a problem than we thought it was, so much so that it looks like Sensys
is going to take a financial beating. The second point is that Sensys, not the
town or the state, will take the loss under the terms of their contract.
For
that reason, I still feel like Charlestown made the right decision to install
the cameras since they helped reduce the risk to life – such as the life
of Colin Foote tragically lost in 2010 to a red-light runner – at no
financial risk to the taxpayers. However, I think Sensys will pull the plug on the cameras as soon as their contract with the town allows them to do so.
We
can look at the rumble strips in a similar way. There is a chance, albeit
remote, that some future fatality or serious injury might be prevented if they
are installed on Route One. We may never know since we have sparse data to show
what the actual risk is on Route One in Charlestown.
We
do know that rumble strips will come at substantial cost and that the state has
much more serious risks along the highways that require attention and money.
We
also know there will be a substantial rise in the noise along Route 1. I looked
at a variety of government reports to try to figure out how much noise
residents can expect from rumble strips.
The
best report I found so far is a 2012
survey of the data by CALTRANS, California’s highway agency.
Most
relevant to Charlestown was their report about Michigan’s findings which
“showed a 16.2-decibel increase in exterior noise levels 95 feet from the road
for a test vehicle driven at 70 mph over edge-line rumble strips, and a
25-decibel increase for another test at 50 feet.” Click here for the entire Michigan
report.
Unlike
typical Charlestown Route 1 road noise (that almost constant hum punctuated by
motorcycles), the burst of sound from the rumble strips will be abrupt, as town
residents living along and near Carolina Back Road already know. Think about
how much you enjoy getting rocked out of a deep sleep when some blood-sucking
mosquito decides to explore your ear canal. There’s the rumble strip effect for
you.
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| As I researched this issue, I found that bicyclists around the world don't like rumble strips and consider them a hazard. |
There
are also concerns being raised by bicyclists about the danger to them of
putting rumble strips in the breakdown lanes of Route 1 which are also used as
bike lanes. The danger to them depends greatly on what kind of strips are used,
but the hazards are real and cited in the government reports I reviewed for
this article.
If we’re looking at a “zero risk” approach, they deserve the same
consideration.
Finally,
is there a better way to address traffic hazards along Charlestown’s stretch of
Route 1? Most of the people who have contacted me would like to see more
Charlestown Police presence along Route 1 and more ticketing of distracted or
impaired drivers. I say amen to that.
Unlike
the Carolina Back Road project where rumble strips were supposedly mandated under the
project’s funding, DOT says that Charlestown’s approval is needed for the
addition of rumble strips to Route 1. So it is up to the five CCA Party Town
Council members to decide.
I
know that this Council usually makes its decisions based on how much political support and campaign money they have received from members of the community who
request their help. I don’t know if the folks upset by the prospect of rumble
strips are all paid-up with the CCA. But I think this is an instance where
there is strong public opinion among the residents along the eastern half of
Route 1 who do not want rumble strips.
And
on the other side of the equation, there does not seem to be any compelling
data to justify the expense and the added quality of life problems the rumble
strips will bring. Sure, I would love to live in a zero-risk world and choose
that option whenever practical. But this is not one of those times.