4,500 speed humps installed in Detroit to slow speeders
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Detroit neighborhoods are cracking down on reckless drivers with a new speed hump effort.
"We are right off Seven Mile, meaning we get a lot of traffic, you hear people speeding up and down the street at all hours of the day and night," said Brittany Record.
Neighborhood speed hump program underway in Detroit
A major effort is underway this spring to install more than 4,000 speed humps throughout the city.
On Tuesday the city of Detroit’s Department of Public Works announced it will install 4,500 speed humps during this year’s construction season.
"We anticipate that will cover 3,200 residential blocks throughout the city," said Ron Brundidge, director, Detroit Department of Public Works.
This construction effort is also putting Detroiters to work with jobs.
"As a Detroiter resident myself, I am very proud to be a part of this process," said foreman Char Monique Nicholson, DPW.
Some speed humps are prefabricated rubber speed cushions, while others are made of asphalt.
Brundidge explained how officials decide which speed hump to install.
"We can see that maybe three or four years down the line, we’re going to have to come back down and pave this street to improve it," he said. "So in those cases, we install the prefabricated so we can remove them and reuse those."
The city allocated $11.5 million that will come from state transportation funds for the program.
The speed hump program is in such high demand with residents that about 9,000 requests were made for this season.
"Any street that doesn’t make it on this year’s program, remains on the list," said Brundidge.
Requests that get priority meet certain criteria.
"How many children live on the block or in the neighborhood, how many situations (have there been) where we have had accidents," he said.
Residents say feels safer now that speed humps were installed. But speed hump installation is not the only work the city of Detroit says it is doing to improve roads.
"This year we will be paving 65 miles of streets throughout the neighborhoods in the city and 25 of those will be throughout major corridors in the city," he said. "And 40 will be residential streets."