Neighbors continue to fight against Everett speeders
Oct 23, 2018, 8:10 AM | Updated: 11:08 am
Steve Schneider collects traffic speed data for the City of Everett. (Chris Sullivan, KIRO Radio)
(Chris Sullivan, KIRO Radio)
Steve Schneider contacted me in August complaining that cut-through traffic in his neighborhood was out of control. He told me that drivers routinely drive at dangerous speeds on the downhill 25 mile an hour stretch of 3rd Street, which is just east of I-5 in Everett.
The city told me it would look into the situation. A few weeks later, Everett officials gave Schneider a radar gun to gather some real speeding data and Schneider has made good use of it.
I sat in his car for a few hours, recently, as he worked the gun. There were cars hitting speeds in the mid-40s. Earlier in the day, he recorded drivers going over 50 miles an hour on the residential street. You could count on close to one hand the actual number of people that were driving at the speed limit.
“We have 40 people going 40 mph, three were going 41, two were going 42, two were going 45, 49, 50, 51,” Schneider said. “It’s like, come on. I can live with 10 over. I can’t live with 20 over. That doesn’t give anybody a chance.”
Schneider said he’s more than willing to gather data for the City of Everett if it helps make his neighborhood safer.
“They (the city) want to, and rightly so, make all decisions based on data, and being a data guy myself for my job I totally get that, which is why they were excited that I was willing to come out here and do this,” he said.
Schneider turned the speed data over to the city. A few weeks later the city installed small speed strips across the road to gather even more data. There is already one of those “your speed is …” signs in the neighborhood, but Schneider says it faces the wrong direction. It alerts southbound drivers, but he believes it is the northbound drivers who are the bigger problem. The city has said it is not opposed to installing one that faces the other direction, even if it’s just a temporary one.
What’s nice is that we were able to get the neighborhood and the city together to work on the issue. The data will help guide what to do next.
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