Friday, June 5, 2015

Rumble strip rumblings

Will Route One get rumble strips whether we want – or need – them?
By Will Collette
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.


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.

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.

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.