Orange Avenue residents lobby for speed table

On Sunday — months after removing a speed table on Orange Avenue — city workers installed a temporary speed table on the same street.

Both projects, located a little more than two blocks apart, were carried out at the request of nearby residents. And both projects were designed to mitigate the impacts of the closure of the Osprey Avenue bridge.

It might seem strange, but city staff said there’s a method to the madness.

First, the temporary speed table. The city installed the traffic-calming device at 1231 S. Orange Ave., just south of the intersection with Bahia Vista Street. The project was a response to concerns from nearby residents, who reported drivers were speeding down Orange Avenue.

Those residents attributed an uptick in speeding to the August closure of the Osprey Avenue bridge, according to Rob Patten, president of the Hudson Bayou Neighborhood Association.

“People used to going down Osprey at a certain speed don’t realize the speed on Orange is 25 mph,” Patten said.

The residents near the temporary speed table feared the problem would only get worse as more part-time residents returned to the area.

“Now that season is starting, we have a lot more people coming down Orange that aren’t familiar with the speed limit,” Patten said. “They want to get to 41 as fast as they did when they went down Osprey. It’s a residential street; it’s not going to happen.”

The city required the approval of 60% of neighboring property owners before it would install the speed table, which residents were able to obtain. As a result, the temporary speed table will be in place on Orange Avenue until the bridge is reopened.

If speeding was such an issue on Orange Avenue, though, why did the city remove the first speed table this summer?

Because residents near that speed table wanted it gone. 

Just north of Alta Vista Street, at the entrance to the Hudson Bayou neighborhood, two speed humps sat on either side of a median filled with trees and plants.

People living nearby reported a series of issues with the speed humps. City staff investigated, and discovered structural deficiencies.

“It was an old speed table, probably from the early ’90s, that became substandard,” said Ryan Chapdelain, a chief planner with the city. “It was causing a lot of noise and vibrations from vehicles going over it that impacted those homes.”

With the Osprey Avenue bridge closure looming, the volume of cars traveling over the speed table was set to spike. As a result, residents asked the city to take out the humps to prevent any additional issues.

They weren’t concerned about cars speeding in front of their homes because they believed that segment of Orange Avenue was already designed to encourage slower driving speeds.

“The fact that they had a landscaped median there and the travel lanes are quite narrow, they felt that already served as a traffic calming measure,” Chapdelain said.

With that speed table out — and the new temporary speed table in place — the city hopes it’s finally struck the perfect balance to manage traffic along Orange Avenue.