City of Jackson residents can now request temporary speed humps to be installed on their street, but they must receive 67% approval from their neighbors to make it happen.
Jackson Mayor Scott Conger announced the program late last week. He says it is a mixture of ideas from cities across the country, to hopefully alleviate speeding in the city’s neighborhoods.
“If we honored every request that came into our office for speed humps, every residential street in the city would have speed humps. And so over the last year, we’ve been looking at other opportunities to do a compromise, because I know that speeding is an issue especially in residential areas,” Conger said.
The city ordered 12 of these speed humps for $2,500. This initial program will allow the Street Department to test their effectiveness and durability.
“One speed hump is not going to be just for one street,” Conger said, “So they’ll space them out based on the length of the street and how many are needed to curb the speeding on the street. So that’s why we want to do a test run for a few months, to see how that works, before we order more and expand the program.”
How the program works
To request speed humps for your street, you will need to visit the City of Jackson Engineering Department. It is located on the second floor of City Hall, and their phone number is (731)425-820.
The Engineering Department will then help determine the length of the street, between certain cross streets, and the number of property owners. Then, you will need to gather the signatures of 67% of those property owners who also believe the street should have a temporary speed hump.
“We know that there is a desire to have that, but we don’t want one resident on the street to dictate what happens on the street. And so that’s why we are getting that buy-in of the entire street, at least 67% of people need to be in favor of that,” Conger said.
Installation
The City of Jackson Streets Department demonstrated the installation of the temporary speed humps Tuesday.
The speed humps are made of a soft rubber material, and are bolted to the asphalt in several places. The total installation took less than 30 minutes. The Streets Department believes the installation should not cause traffic congestion.
Once they are installed, the speed humps will be used for 90 days. At the end of that time period, traffic will be reevaluated.
Julia Ewoldt, julia@jacksonpost.news
