Garden City hires engineer to assess need for speed bumps after installation; residents complain

Russell Keevy, a resident of Garden City, said that one day a neighbor thought they saw a near-catastrophe on the sleepy, one-way street of Azalea Avenue. The next thing he knew there were two speed bumps on his road, with one almost in front of his house.

"A few months ago, they started showing up all over Garden City, and in some places, it seemed rather excessive," Keevy said. "Everybody kind of hated them, but they used to be kind of on the more arterial streets, the busier streets.”

After he saw the two on his street, he contacted Garden City Manager Scott Robider and asked why they had speed bumps on their road.

Robider said that the city staff studied residential roads during rush hours at morning, noon and afternoon by putting out radar trailers to gather data, which Keevy said he had never seen.

Although the city has now hired former Chatham County engineer Leon Davenport to assess the effectiveness of the speed bumps, there wasn’t anyone consulted beforehand.

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Robider posted on the Garden City official Facebook page on Sept. 29 that he would be "engaging a third-party engineering firm to conduct a field assessment of all traffic calming devices (speed bumps, stop signs, etc.)" at the request of mayor and council.

The assessment will analyze the placement, design and other factors related to the speed bumps throughout the city, the post noted, and evaluate the current locations of all recently added stop signs. It will also provide recommendations for removal, modifications or additions for speed bumps and stop signs.

"As city manager, I am directly responsible for operational decisions made throughout the city, so I have complete ownership over any issues arising from any program under my control," Robider noted. "The 2022 Safety Initiative has improved safety throughout the city, most notably in the neighborhoods adjacent to the Georgia Ports. However, I acknowledge that mistakes have been made in implementing this Initiative, and I own those mistakes. I know we can always do things better, so this assessment will help us do just that."

Davenport said that although it's not common to do on the backside of an installation, cities and counties sometimes have to look at different transportation elements after they are constructed. He also said that the more typical type of traffic calming feature used today is a speed hump.

"In looking at the speed bumps already installed, my hope is to map their locations and determine just how effective they have been. It might be better to look at other types of traffic calming," Davenport said.

Keevey and some other residents are not happy that the city is just now hiring a consultant.

“I’m going, 'You just spent $93,000. Now how much is this going to cost?' It’s really ripping off the taxpayers because of your incompetence here,'" Keevey said.

The city spent $93,600 on a safety initiative that included the implementation of the 103 speed bumps, Robider said. The Garden City Safety Initiative was started in 2021 and was meant to add 40 additional stop signs to residential areas, implement speed bumps, and continue the expansion of city-wide safety camera systems and add nearly 200 LED streetlights in the city.

The city spent $16,758 on 150 rubber or “composite” speed bumps that were purchased in October 2021 that are no longer on the roads. Robider said those speed bumps were not suitable for large truck traffic.

According to invoices sent by the vendor the government used to install the speed bumps, the city paid over $50,000 to install the 111 speed bumps and overlays. Overall, the city spent over $66,000 on rubber and asphalt speed bumps.

Morgan Freeman, a resident of Rowe Road and a member of the Garden City Community Group, a group that acts as the liaison between Garden City residents and officials, said that they were some of the people who advocated for speed bumps in the beginning.

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They said they were thinking of speed tables, which raise the entire wheelbase of a vehicle to reduce its speed, instead of speed bumps in the residential areas where speeding was a problem.

Rowe Road now has three speed bumps. Two of them are nearly back-to-back, and there's one right before a newly placed stop sign.

"I asked him [Robider] face to face, 'Why do we have two back-to-back in a row?'" Freeman said. "He said, 'Oh, I think there was confusion with the contractor.' That was it. He didn't elaborate anything further."

Freeman also said that there are bigger issues that should have been solved before implementing speed bumps.

"Roads are falling apart. There's grass growing in the middle of roads," Morgan said. "There's no preventative maintenance to prevent that either. Our sewer and water lines are severely outdated. So, I just feel like the process was maybe done backward just to satisfy residents."

Robider said that although people are complaining about the speed bumps, they seem to be in the minority.

"I'd have 20 or 30 people that are complaining about speed bumps. There are 10,370 other people that aren't," Robider said.

Destini Ambus is the general assignment reporter for Chatham County municipalities for Savannah Morning News. You can reach her at dambus@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Garden City hires engineer to assess need for speed bumps after installation