SECONDS COUNT! Petition Drive Successful

SECONDS COUNT!

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Warren Hultquist (303) 541-0151

David Wagner (303) 440-9446

SECONDS COUNT! PETITION DRIVE SUCCESSFUL

Boulder, CO-September 24, 1999--The Boulder city clerk certified yesterday that the SECONDS COUNT! initiative petition drive had been successful, collecting enough signatures of registered Boulder voters to submit its proposed ordinance to city council. According to Boulder's charter, the council must now either adopt the ordinance or place it on the November 2000 ballot.

The ordinance would improve emergency response throughout the city by banning two types of traffic devices from public streets: vertical obstacles built in driving lanes, such as speed bumps and raised crosswalks, and traffic circles at intersections with rotary islands too small for emergency vehicles to negotiate easily. Other traffic features meeting certain design requirements would be allowed under the ordinance. The ordinance would not effect private driveways or parking lots, and exempts active construction zones.

The SECONDS COUNT! initiative was a grass-roots reaction to the council's decision to allow emergency response to be degraded by delay-inducing traffic features, even on a network of Critical Emergency Response Routes (CERRs) designated by the Fire Department. The ordinance takes its name from the fact that when responders are on their way to fire or medical emergencies, seconds count in saving lives.  Council voted to allow neighborhood activists to request traffic devices wherever they perceive a problem with traffic. Council also concluded there should be no objective criteria for placing delay-inducing obstacles, ensuring acrimonious debate demanding council's attention to every such request.

Warren Hultquist, Chairman of the SECONDS COUNT! drive, said, "Citizens have been fighting these hazards for five years, but council has listened to claims that our neighborhoods are endangered by recklessly speeding cars.  There just isn't any objective foundation for that view. We understand the concerns about speeding and support effective traffic law enforcement, but don't think the city should put lives at risk twenty-four hours a day by delaying emergency fire and medical service to our neighborhoods."  Boulder joins other jurisdictions around he world where public concerns about traffic mitigation devices have derailed narrowly focused programs.  Houston recently bowed to public outrage and charges of racial discrimination because of selective traffic calming and will now keep emergency routes clear. Portland, Oregon follows a similar rule. Sarasota, Florida citizens sued for removal of the devices, but the suit was ironically dismissed on grounds the plaintiffs were no more affected than all other residents. The city council of San Luis Obispo, California removed traffic mitigation throughout an entire district after it met immediate and widespread community opposition. In Montgomery County, Maryland, 14,000 citizens petitioned for removal of speed bumps that are worsening emergency response. Berkeley, California has imposed a moratorium due to concerns over emergency response and effects on the disabled population. And Huddersfield, England has removed devices on access routes to hospitals. Many of these municipalities had used Boulder's traffic mitigation handbook to guide their efforts.

If the SECONDS COUNT! measure is passed, the city manager-who in Boulder is also designated as traffic engineer-will be prohibited from constructing or installing any further devices of the two prohibited types. He will also be required to remove those already in place within one year. Five traffic circles, five raised intersections, 29 raised crosswalks, and 23 speed bumps would be taken out. The SECONDS COUNT! committee estimates removal costs to be less than $194,000, for which appropriated but unspent monies already exist in a traffic mitigation account of the city's transportation fund. No new taxes would be required to fund the measure, and no current programs or projects would be curtailed. Temporary experiments at nine locations would also be covered, if not previously removed.  SECONDS COUNT! is a successful effort of Boulder, Colorado citizens to place an initiative on the ballot banning traffic mitigation devices that delay emergency response.

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