Almost 500 Speed Humps in NYC

As of september 2000, according to the Department of Transportation's web site, DOT had installed 462 speed humps around the city. The city's speed hump program was started in June 1996 after much lobbying and groundwork by T.A. Despite strong political and grassroots support, the program had sputtered until recently, bottoming out in then-DOT commissioner Wilbur Chapman's statement last November that speed humps were a Band-Aid solution, and would be discontinued. Groups and politicians all over the city were outraged, and fortunately City Hall quickly overruled the Commissioner, and reinstated the speed hump program.

The program still faces several major hurdles, including a lack of a coordinated city-wide policy on speed hump requests and approval criteria for installation, and hundreds of backlogged speed hump requests from neighborhoods around the city. Transportation Alternatives congratulates the DOT on its progress so far, and challenges the department to develop a city-wide policy, and to step up the installation of speed humps even further, to 250 a year.

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