The political nature of calming projects has resulted in an attempt to ignore the concerns of our fire chiefs about delays the devices impose upon emergency rescue vehicles. Fire chiefs, as city employees, often will not voice concern until the level of risk becomes intolerable. An analysis performed by Ronald Bowman, a scientist in Boulder, Colorado http://members.aol.com/raybowman/risk97/eval1.html and applied to the City of Austin, Texas by Assistant Fire Chief Les Bunte http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/texts/tfc_calm.pdf proves we are in far greater risk from even minor delays to emergency response caused by calming devices than from vehicles -- speeding or not.

In 1998 the ITE on behalf of the FHWA prepared an informational report on traffic calming in the United States and Canada. Reid Ewing, Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Systems at the University of Florida and Chairman of the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) in Washington at the time, authored the report. Mr. Ewing seems to reveal his bias in the chapter of his draft report, Traffic Calming: State-of the-Art, on emergency response. Ewing titles Chapter 7, "Agency Concerns (and How They Can be Addressed)." He characterizes the concerns of fire chiefs as "making points" (p. 150). He suggests that transportation planners use "strategies", including the "threat of liability", to make a "case" before city councils (p.162). He proposes that decisions concerning safety are better made by residents than the trained safety professionals of our emergency rescue services.

"Probably the most appropriate role for emergency services is 'advisory', as in Austin (Texas). After all, traffic and emergency services are independent line agencies that answer to chief executives and legislative bodies. One should not answer to the other." (P. 137).

". . . it is evident that emergency response routes should be negotiated rather than accepted unilaterally from the fire department.. . . not only should response routes be negotiated, but they should be negotiated with ample public input. Residents are the best judges of risks to themselves from traffic, fire and emergency medical incidents".(p. 155)

Mr. Ewing contends emergency calls are "rare" compared to the "constant problems of speeding traffic." (p.162) He, as many transportation planners, compares emergency calls to speeding cars, equating every car traveling as little as one mile per hour over the speed limit to a call from a resident stricken by a medical emergency or a structure on fire.

Emergency calls are not the rare events Ewing and some members of city councils and transportation divisions would like to believe. The City of Houston, for example, responds to an average of 150,000 emergency medical calls and 100,000 fire calls per year. While calming devices are purported to increase safety, Reid Ewing's final report (1999) acknowledges assessment of the safety benefits of calming devices is inconsistent.

Ewing states:

"Traffic calming in the U.S. is largely restricted to low volume residential streets. Collisions occur infrequently on such streets to begin with, and any systematic change in collision rates tends to get lost in the random variation from year to year. This limits our confidence in drawing inferences about safety impacts of traffic calming."
                (Traffic Calming: State of the Practice p. 123)

Confronted with evidence that collisions and vehicle/pedestrian conflicts are infrequent on neighborhood streets, transportation planners turn to livability as justification for devices. Residents, however, are fervently divided in their opinions about the benefits of the devices and their purported impact on quality-of-life. Many residents object to the increased noise, pollution, vibration, signage, discomfort in negotiating the devices on a daily basis to reach their homes, as well as to their impact on residents with disabilities and the threat to the well-being of their family members from delayed emergency response.

Calming projects have proceeded in the United States largely because they are biased toward those who want the devices, eliminating the voices of those downstream from the devices and those on parallel streets where traffic will be diverted. City councils are funneling millions of tax-payer dollars into the devices without knowing whether slowing vehicles to speeds below posted speed limits, required to negotiate the devices, results in fewer vehicle/vehicle or vehicle/pedestrian conflicts. When post-studies at devices show a dramatic increase in accidents or pedestrian/vehicle conflict, devices are rarely removed. Pre-installation speed tests are sometimes conducted repeatedly until the desired results of speeding are attained. Political support for devices in the United States, predicated on the numbers of devices in other countries, ignores all negative data from other countries indicating resident opposition and problems from their long-term use.

The allocation of jurisdiction over the installation of calming devices to city councils and employees of Public Works Departments has culminated in an unprecedented compromise of community safety. People around the country are calling for an end to the installation of all deflection devices that impede emergency services, harm residents with disabilities, damage vehicles and increase pollution and disharmony in our communities. A truly independent and scientific cost/benefit analysis of the data available on the issue from this country and abroad should be conducted by an agency of the U.S. government to determine which, if any, devices can be safely used in our communities and what standards for the design and placement of the devices must be required of our local governments.

A cost/benefit analysis should include the following:

• Risk to resident lives from delays to emergency response, using the analysis developed by scientist, Ronald Bowman of Boulder, Colorado
  
• Effect on driver, motorcyclist, bicyclist and pedestrian safety
  
• Potential effects on patients with varying medical conditions transported to local hospitals by emergency vehicles
  
• Effect on disabled drivers
  
• Damage to emergency vehicles and commercial vehicles as well as damage to sensitive equipment transported by such vehicles
  
• Increased auto emissions and fuel consumption from repeated deceleration and acceleration to negotiate devices
  
• Increased noise on residential streets
  
• Decreased property values on residential blocks where speed humps installed
  
• Potential legal liability to cities for injuries caused by foreseeable hazards related to placement of obstructions on public streets
  
• Impact of conflict over desirability of devices on the harmony of American neighborhoods