Earlier this year, the City of Woodland announced its 2019-20 priorities and goals, which included traffic calming strategies to improve neighborhood livability. Traffic calming has been a traffic engineering practice which started in Europe in the 1980s. The goal of traffic calming is to provide noticeable guidance for drivers to drive safely with awareness of their surroundings. In Woodland, the 1996 General Plan announced a program for the use of traffic calming measures in both new and existing development areas. The Spring Lake development area has installed passive traffic calming measures, such as varied road surfaces at crosswalks and active calming measures like speed bumps and roundabouts. Both provide a few changes in the road to increase driver awareness and reduce speeds. In the 2018-19 fiscal year, the city allocated $100,000 to help re-establish the Neighborhood Traffic Calming program. This funding supported pilot traffic calming projects in select locations. For example, some radar speed limit signs are installed in school areas to raise awareness of speeds. The cost to install one of the radar signs is between $20,000 and $100,000 depending on the power source and sign location.
On July 2, 2019, the Woodland City Council approved a 180-day traffic calming program intended to slow traffic on residential streets. City Manager Paul Navazio recommended putting the program in place, gathering data to measure its effectiveness, and then working with the city council for further refinement. The streets discussed by the council are Pendegast, East Gum Avenue, West Street, Thomas Street, El Dorado Drive, Woodland Avenue, Buena Terra Drive, Casa Linda Drive, and Leo Way. These were identified in June through resident input. City engineers created a “traffic calming tool kit,” designed to measure traffic speeds and hazards and implement safety solutions. The city’s Principal Civil Engineer Katie Wurzel said that the tool kit would help achieve the right balance between public safety and the rights of bicyclists and pedestrians. The “tool kit” includes receiving neighborhood petitions, doing a traffic study, creating a plan, getting public feedback, implementing the plan, and measuring the plan’s success.
The Woodland Police Department Volunteers in Policing (ViP) Program is actively supporting the traffic calming effort through two efforts: public education and data gathering. The ViP office bulletin board has two traffic calming assignments listed on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 5-7 p.m. This is a great opportunity for ViPs who work or go to school during the day and prefer to work in the evening. For the ViPs, traffic calming involves patrolling specified streets in the ViP vehicle to passively educate the public. When other drivers see a patrol car, they tend to drive more slowly and stop more carefully. The ViP driver sets an example for other drivers by driving at or below the speed limit, paying attention to school zones, and stopping fully at stop signs. To be trained for traffic calming: (1) see Shirley Higgins for training concerning how to check out, drive, and return a ViP vehicle and (2) review the list of streets in the ViP office that need patrol. Later, the ViPs may help the city gather data by measuring the speed of cars on specific streets in certain areas. To join this effort get trained, pick a street from Morgan’s list, drive those streets safely and carefully to educate other drivers, and keep Woodland drivers calm!