The City of Manteca will no longer wait for residents in neighborhoods where there are schools, parks, and longer than average straight stretches of street to ask for speed lumps.
The City Council directed staff Tuesday to add speed lumps in such locations whenever future street projects take place.
“We want to make sure existing neighborhoods are treated the same (as new neighborhoods),” Mayor Gary Singh said after the meeting.
It is now city policy to include such traffic calming devices as speed lumps, roundabouts, and bulb outs on intersections on streets in new neighborhoods that border parks.
Speed lumps, however, can only be deployed on streets where the speed limit is below 30 mph.
The directive was attached to updates to the city’s traffic calming program approved by the council including reducing steps in the process that could secure citizen requested speed lumps for neighborhoods.
It is too late to add traffic calming speed lumps near parks and schools in the Shasta Park and Diamond Oak neighborhoods where street sealing work is either underway or will be in the coming weeks.
The city instituted deployment of traffic calming measures around schools and parks located in various neighborhoods will take a number of years to tackle.
That’s because street maintenance work on a neighborhood scale such as what is taking place now near Shasta Park and Shasta School happens every 12 to 25 years.
Speed lumps are part of the City of Manteca Traffic Calming Program adopted in 2018.
The speed lumps are basically four smaller speed humps spaced to allow buses and emergency vehicles to straddle them by going down the middle of the road or toward the side of the road.
They are placed in such a manner that fire trucks, with a wider wheelbase, can avoid going over them.
There are pavement markings alerting motorists to the speed lumps ahead. That is in addition to signage that reads “Speed Lump” and “15 mph”.
The speed lumps cost roughly $4,000 to install.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
