Can a Radar Speed Sign Change a Neighborhood?

By: Spencer Rascoff, Zillow COO | September 17, 2008

That’s the $953,500* question in Madison Park, Seattle.

I live in Madison Park, along with several other Zillowites. It’s a great neighborhood, just minutes away from downtown Seattle. What makes it unique is that Madison Street (the main arterial) comes to an abrupt halt at Lake Washington, and the recently renovated park of Madison Park is a great coda to the street. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Madison Street isn’t a through street, there is still a lot of traffic on Madison.

So last week, the City of Seattle installed a radar speed sign, which displays the speed you’re going as you zoom down the hill. When they installed it last week, there was a 30 MPH speed limit (as you can see in the photo). During the first week, most cars seemed to exceed the 30 MPH limit, despite the flashing lights that the sign emits when you disobey it. Yesterday, the speed limit was changed to 25 MPH and the sign was replaced. I didn’t know it was that easy! No proclamation by the mayor; no vote before the city council, no neighborhood gathering. Just snap, crackle, pop, and the speed limit changed. The 25 MPH limit seems to be working much better, and I’m optimistic that the sign will slow traffic down on Madison Street, which will make the neighborhood even more livable and will help with street noise.

This isn’t just an academic issue — it’s serious business for residents of Madison Park. For example, I live very near a home for sale which is having a hard time partly due to the street noise on Madison. 1519 39th Avenue East, Seattle is a great home for sale, but check out the Home Q&A on Zillow in which the street noise issue is discussed.

Here’s hopin’ that The Sign wins and people slow down.

*$953,500 is the Zillow Home Value Index — or the median of all home values in Madison Park.

Stumble it!
Categories: Real Estate

Comments

6 Comments so far

Rich on September 18, 2008 4:40 am

Want to slow people down? Have a resonable speed limit in the first place.

http://www.motorists.org/speedlimits/

I think a slight adjustment to 35 or 40 would keep people within that range. Perhaps you should ask the police to do a speed survey where they record car speed at a certain spot over a serveral week period (it all automatic).
Rhonda Porter on September 18, 2008 3:29 pm

Was it difficult to get the city to install the sign? At our Seattle Night Out/Block Watch party, I asked Seattle’s finest about getting such a sign for our street–we have drivers who only seem to enjoy speeding up for the speed bumps–and he said it was challenging to deal with the DOT. Your thoughts?
Spencer Rascoff on September 18, 2008 5:21 pm

Hi Rhonda,
I actually have no idea how this sign came to exist. I was pretty surprised that the City didn’t send us a letter or something. You’d think the City would want public comment on this stuff, and would make it easy for us to request new signs like this. But they don’t!
Richard Garrett on September 19, 2008 12:20 pm

The signs like you see in the picture work because they create active attention from the driver, thus causing them to notice their nd in most cases slow down.

They are “Green” and have none of the disadvantages of the HUMPS, the leaset of which is the $ 0.25 in gasoline you spend going over it. Hopefully more signs will be used instead of gas wasting HUMPS.

Rich garrett
Katarina on September 23, 2008 12:51 pm

I paid ticket a month ago and didn’t like it.That just makes me angry. I totally agree with a first comment.Speed limit is not reasonable.
installerone on January 19, 2009 11:05 am

There are grants which will pay the full costs of these type driver feedback signs on http://www.safe-kids-worldwide.com and http://www.safe-routes-usa.com