Friday Video: ‘Car Kryptonite’ in Providence

Want to slow down drivers? Put things in the road.

That’s what our friend Clarence Eckerson Jr. discovered on a recent working vacation in Providence, R.I., where authorities laid down speed humps on the badly designed South Main Street — and enjoyed what appear to be unexpected results:

We shared Eckerson’s excitement, but felt there had to be an explanation. After all, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley is no fan of the normal speed bumps in the Ocean State; last year, he ordered a complete moratorium on the life-saving (but driver-antagonizing) devices.

“We wanted to pause because we wanted to do more of a study … to see what’s the best way to do traffic calming or to keep people from speeding,” Department of Public Works Director Patricia Coyne-Fague told the Providence Journal (which everyone calls the ProJo). “There’s a lot of different methods for that. There’s speed bumps, humps, lumps, speed cameras, roundabouts, signage. So we just want to be a little bit more thoughtful about placing these things … in terms of what really works best.” (Memo to Coyne-Fague: Kansas City thinks speed bumps are great!)

There’s been no coverage in Providence since the February 2023 speed bump moratorium announcement. Even when Smiley signed onto a commitment to implement Vision Zero in the city earlier this year, the city press release didn’t even mention speeding.

Nor did the ProJo even follow up when Smiley went ahead and installed the Eckerson-impressing speed humps in July. We reached out to Smiley’s office to get the skinny:

“When we entered office, we were working through a process for meeting traffic-calming requests,” said mayoral spokesman Josh Estrella. “We now have a clearer process that has allowed us to better assess and recommend what traffic-calming measures are appropriate for a given area, but we are still working towards a written policy.”

Given how great these speed bumps seem to be (at least when drivers aren’t used to seeing them) any tactical urbanist worth her salt could easily google “Premium Textured Rubber Speed Hump” and find the very bumps caught by Eckerson’s cameras.

Hint, hint.

Got a submission for our weekly “Friday Video” feature? Email Kea Wilson.