Since Madison formalized its resident-driven effort to "calm" traffic without the need for a stop sign or a police officer's ticket, the city has installed hundreds of speed humps, traffic islands, traffic circles and bump outs — at a cost of more than $1 million.

The traffic-calming devices — a bland name for things that tend to generate a lot of strong feelings — have become something of a Madison institution; it's hard to drive very far in the city without encountering at least one.

Speed humps and their ilk reflect a shift in philosophy among traffic engineers about what constitutes traffic and the purposes roads should serve.

They appear to work, too. Before-and-after studies of about four places in Madison where they were installed showed they were effective at reducing speeds and cut-through traffic, according to traffic engineer Mark Winter.

A broader 1999 study of the devices in 20 other U.S. cities, done by the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration, also found sharp drops in vehicle speeds, crashes and volume after the devices were installed.

But if traffic engineers have embraced TCDs, the public and other city departments are far less admiring.

"If anything, it made things less safe," Southwest Side resident Gregory Kipfer said of the two traffic islands the city installed on Prairie Road at Putnam Road, less than a half-block from his home. He said they haven't slowed traffic and are difficult to navigate around when there's been a lot of snow.

There may be places the islands are warranted, he said, but the city "just went hog wild" in the sheer number of them installed around Madison.

Defining 'traffic'

For engineers of the 1950s and 1960s, traffic meant automobiles, Winter said.

That changed beginning in the 1980s. Traffic no longer meant just vehicles, he said, but bicycles and pedestrians as well.

Robert Seyfried, director of the transportation safety division at Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety, said traffic calming came about as "more of a recognition that different streets are intended to serve different functions." Some are arterial streets, designed for longer trips, he said, while others are mainly intended for use by the people who live on them.

Seyfried said road systems in a lot of older cities are built on a grid, which lends itself to cut-through traffic. A physical change in the road, such a hump or a cul-de-sac, can force a change in such behavior. TCDs do so without relying on the good will of the driver or the enforcement powers of police. It's either slow down for a speed hump, for example, or risk serious damage to your car.

In contrast, the effectiveness of a stop sign or other traffic sign depends on the drivers making the decision to stop or alter their driving in some other way.

Number of TCDs rising

In Madison, the first TCDs began appearing in 1997, when the city began offering a way for residents to petition for the devices through what's known now as the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program.

Requests are evaluated on a point system, with points assigned based the number of crashes on the street, vehicle speeds and other factors. Requests must earn at least 30 points to be eligible for funding.

On average, the city has done about seven traffic-calming projects a year, but the number has varied wildly, with five or fewer each year from 1997 to 2002, then nine in 2003 and jumping to 20 in 2004. If you think you started to notice more of them around town last year, you're right. Sixteen were installed in 2007.

Most are islands and speed humps, and there are more than twice as many on the West Side than on the East.

While the West does have more residents than the East, it doesn't have twice as many.

"The way the program's set up is it's all grass roots," Winter said, meaning that if residents don't ask for traffic-calming devices, they don't get them, even if the street they live on is arguably more dangerous than a street where the devices have been installed.

West Side residents are "maybe a little more active" when it comes to asking for traffic calming, Winter said, or maybe East Siders just aren't aware of the program.

Hard on emergency vehicles

Rosemary Bodolay lives in one of those older Madison neighborhoods that would seem ripe for traffic calming. And while she believes traffic calming is a worthy idea, she and many of her neighbors believe the traffic circle at Randall and Vilas avenues is ineffective. It doesn't slow traffic, and the traffic pattern it's supposed to dictate is frequently ignored, she said.

The city's fire and streets departments have reluctantly accepted traffic calming.

When response time is a matter of life or death, speed humps "kind of put us in a compromising position," said Madison Fire Chief Debra Amesqua. Fire engines must navigate speed bumps as if they are coming to complete stop, she said, and unwittingly going over one at a high speed "can totally tear out one of the bottoms of these large rigs."

City Streets Superintendent Al Schumacher said his drivers actually prefer the humps to the islands, which can be hard to get around and are easily damaged by plows.

Taking good with bad

But it seems clear that many residents have been willing to accept some downsides in the name of slower traffic and, presumably, safer streets.

Frank Peterson said the speed humps installed on Gregory Street where he lives in the Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood on Madison's near West Side are "very effective."

"The only negatives are the blocks that are waiting for their turn," he said.

Winter, the city traffic engineer, said that after putting so many humps and islands in over the last 11 years, requests for traffic calming are "reaching a plateau."

He is aware of the complaints from drivers and other city departments but maintains that "typically, the person who says they don't like them don't live there."