At a Council meeting earlier this month, Sunnyvale Council improved the Traffic Calming Program by making it more accessible for residents to request traffic calming measures for their street. Up to now, the Program had been disqualifying the vast majority of requests (94% rejection rate). To address this problem, the City identified the main reasons for rejection and made adjustments to try to reduce the rejection rate. The City took further action to improve the usability and efficacy of the Program.
Traffic calming is a set of actions the City can take to slow or divert motor vehicle traffic on a street, with the goal of improving safety and quality of life for walking and biking. Calming measures include signage, speed humps, traffic circles, raised crosswalks, etc. Sunnyvale has had a Traffic Calming Program since 1997. In brief, the Program works as follows. A resident requests traffic calming on a particular street and drums up neighborhood support for it, and then the City evaluates motor vehicle traffic and provides traffic calming options. The process can take approximately a year to complete, with variations due to funding and staff availability. If successful, traffic calming can be a boon to neighborhood well-being.
Residential Collector Streets Now Included
In the existing Program, one common reason for requests being rejected was that the street of interest was a residential collector, which was not included in the Program. Residential collectors accounted for 34% of all requests. Previously, the Program allowed only residential streets to be calmed. Residential streets serve residential neighborhoods and aren't designed for through traffic. Residential collectors, on the other hand, are designed for through traffic, connecting residential streets to arterials. Residential collectors are often populated with residences as well. Examples of residential collectors are Remington, Washington, and Hollenbeck. Residents on residential collectors are concerned about the unsafe conditions created by speeding cars. To address residents' concerns, the City decided to include residential collectors in the revised Program.
Collecting Signatures is Daunting
A second common reason for rejection was that requestors did not submit a petition. The petition is used to demonstrate broad neighborhood support for traffic calming on the street of interest. Historically, out of all the residential street requests, 68% did not turn in a petition. This high drop rate indicates that the requirement of collecting signatures from 50% of the residents is daunting to many. In the revised Program, the City eased this requirement a bit by excluding high density housing, like apartment complexes, from the signature requirement. In most other city programs surveyed, only 1 signature is required, that of the requestor.
Traffic Thresholds Adjusted Slightly
The third common reason for rejection was that the street didn't meet the traffic thresholds to qualify. Two-thirds of the requests that underwent a traffic study failed. For a street to qualify, car traffic could either surpass the speeding threshold, which was the speed limit + 7 mph, or surpass the car volume threshold, which was 1000 cars/day. In the revised Program, the City reduced the speeding threshold a bit, by 2 mph, and kept the volume threshold constant. This slight reduction in speeding threshold will improve the qualification rate slightly, and aligns with progressive programs in Redwood City, Menlo Park, Berkeley, and Davis. Collectors will not have a volume threshold limitation, since they are designed for higher volume traffic.
Traffic diversion to other streets used to be a reason for rejection. However, the City recognized that traffic diversion is a natural consequence of calming residential streets, that residential streets receiving diverted traffic can be calmed as well, and that diversion can even be desirable if the traffic is moved to arterials or collectors. Therefore, the City removed the prohibition against traffic diversion.
Other Improvements
The Program used to require 60% neighborhood agreement for the selected calming measure; the revised Program reduced that rate to 50% agreement.
The Program used to allow anyone living within 100' of the calming measure to veto the measure. But, the City removed this undemocratic provision in the revised Program.
The above changes to improve the qualification rate add up, but given that some big hurdles still remain, namely signature gathering and surpassing traffic thresholds, we do not expect a big jump in the qualification rate.
Other positive changes came out of the Council meeting. Raised intersections are now part of the toolkit of calming measures. A 2025 study session is scheduled to investigate how AB 43 and related state legislation will allow the City to reduce speed limits for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. (Note: Reducing the speed limit does reduce motor vehicle speeds and consequently fatalities -- see Safetrec research.) The revised Program will operate with more transparency. Requestors will be able to look up online the status of their request, and hopefully details like reason for denial if denied. Significantly, safety is now a Program goal. It wasn't before.
Try It Out
Try out the Program. Request traffic calming for your neighborhood and let us know your experience. If you have the passion to calm your neighborhood, you will likely succeed. Here's the Program brochure to get started. (This is the old brochure, so you'll see the old thresholds, but the process is still the same.)
We appreciate Councilmember Richard Mehlinger for making the motion for the above Program improvements, the rest of the Council for voting in favor of the motion, and Transportation Staff for doing the research and coming up with sound recommendations, many of which were adopted.
About the Author
Sharlene Liu is Founder and Chair of Sunnyvale Safe Streets. She has been cycling for over half a century and walks her neighborhood daily with her dog.