The first installment of a two-day traffic-calming series looked
at a $57,000 traffic study completed by Kirkland’s Transpo
Group.
There were two traffic engineering terms — 85th percentile speed
and collision rates — in Sunday’s story that deserve further explanation
because, as Jon Pascal from Transpo Group, put it, “those are
engineering terms (that) are hard to describe.”
The first term, 85th percentile speed, refers to the number of
drivers who traveled at or below the recorded speeds, Pascal
said.
It’s one of the ways traffic engineers determine what the average
traveling speeds of drivers are. The 85th percentile model presumes
that the remaining percentage of travelers will always speed
excessively, regardless of road engineering.
On Hood Canal Drive, the study said, “The 85th percentile speed
ranges between 42 to 46 mph prior to speed tables and 35 to 46 mph
after the tables were installed.”
What this means is that 85 percent of travelers on Hood Canal drove at 42 to 46 mph or below before the tables were installed, Pascal said. The speed range was given to account for the three speed study locations placed on Hood Canal Drive for the study. So hypothetically, of the 85 percent of drivers, a number of them could have been going under the 42 to 46 mph speed range. The same logic would be applied to the 85th percentile speed for the 35 to 46 mph speed range after table installation.
Collision rates presented in the study were also perplexing.
Engineers came up with numbers such as 0.3, 0.7 and 1.7 collisions by dividing the number of annual collisions by the number of years the study looked at, which in this case was three years before the tables were installed and three years after installation.
For instance, on Twin Spits Road, the study said there were 0.3 collisions per year from 2007 to 2010. So, within that three year period, there was about one collision a year after the tables were installed. On Hood Canal Drive, there was about 2 collisions per year from 2004 to 2007 ( 0.7 collisions annually) and about five collisions from 2007 to 2010 (1.7 collisions annually.)
Pascal said Transpo Group engineers rounded the numbers for the sake of table presentation.
Here’s a link to the report: Hansville traffic calming study
There seems to be a difficulty in defining “Speed Table”.
Those on Hood Canal Drive, similar to those on Tracyton Blvd., have a graduated incline up and down, and a flat “table” in the interim. Those on Twin Spits, and Hansville Road, are the opposite; the approach and departure are short, and instant, the “table” portion short, or seems that way. They are no more than long “speed bumps”, similar to those similarly marked as such on Bangor Base.
While those on Hood Canal can be taken by most vehicles at near the current speed limit with little difficulty, those on Twin Spits are much more limited; 20 mph is about tops for a luxury car or modern light truck, far less for heavy trucks and, yes, emergency vehicles.
And, per Commissioner Gelder’s letter, it seems that the gentler tables on Hood Canal are going to be made gentler, while the elongated speed bumps on Twin Spits and Hansville are to be left as they are.