A crew from the City of Seattle are out this morning measuring the newly reinstalled speed bumps along the 4700 block of Beach Drive. I tried to talk to one of the gentlemen who seemed to be supervising, however he was less than chatty. He told me the group is there to measure “tolerances”. As I was not able to pry another word out of him, I’m assuming this was to see if if the humps can be raised higher while allowing emergency vehicles to “tolerate” the bumps.

I told him that the neighbors would really like to see more done on this stretch of Beach Drive as it’s often difficult to cross the street and unsafe with how some drivers use it as a freeway to and from Alki. I pretty much just received a blank stare. Maybe next time I’ll bring them coffee. 😉

A few days ago, KOMO4 news addressed the speed cushions and how the neighborhood is less than impressed with the effectiveness. It’s my guess that their coverage is what dragged the City back to the bumps.

Bumps, humps or cushions, it doesn’t matter to me what the term is, we need more done to stop the speeding and the passing that is constantly taking place in our neighborhood. Two nights ago, while walking our dogs, a neighbor and I witnessed two cars passing two cars flying north on Beach Drive. If someone would have been trying to cross the street, they would have had nowhere to run to get out of the way.

I hope that it doesn’t take a serious accident to have the City take real action to make Beach Drive a safer road for all of us. I don’t think that raising the cushions an inch is going to help deter the speeders – especially when they just scoot to the center of the road where the slope is lower (as it’s intentionally designed for emergency vehicles).

Is it time for our neighborhood to create a community organization to address issues like this?