COUNTY

DOES SLOPPY

JOB ON

SPRINGFIELD

SPEED BUMPS

Middle Bump on Ridgefield Violates

Maryland State Law Prohibiting

Speed Bumps on Steep Hills

Another www.RobertDyer.net Exclusive!!!

I went personally to Springfield and Ridgefield Roads to examine the results of the World's Fastest Placement of Speed Bumps in history.

The results were about what one would expect from a rush job.

On the block of Springfield between Ogden and Parkston, the new Speed Bump 15 MPH signs are blocked by trees. That is a major traffic engineering blunder.

And about that 15 MPH, that's slower than the regular 20 MPH bumps you find elsewhere. That's ridiculous. 15 in a 25 MPH zone? Again, terrible traffic engineering. Just terrible.

Aside from the ugly, ugly aesthetics of the bumps, the 2nd bump on Ridgefield is illegal under Maryland state law - you cannot place a speed bump on a steep hill.

That one has to go, unless the county is above the law.

And the rush job made a mess of streets, and maybe even peoples' cars. There are wet asphalt tire tracks going in all directions from the bumps, as the workers did not allow them to fully dry. At least one sign is crooked - on the day of installation! That same sign has an ugly black paint smear across the top, too. This is how things are done in the 20816 zip code? Probably not after next November's election.

Why the rush job? Aside from the well-connected residents who ordered these up, the pending controversy over the Cromwell bumps probably created an urgency to get these down before new guidelines went into place. But we all knew there weren't going to be any changes to the rules.

I think it would have been smarter to place the bumps in a careful manner, because this county council is 100% in favor of speed bumps. They have totally ignored any other opinion brought to them, and anyone who has heard a presentation by Tracy Wroe, the county's "bump engineer," knows how passionate he and the county are about placing these obstacles down everywhere.

In a time when special needs kids are being cheated by the budget, and low income senior citizens are having their subsidized dentures being taken away by the county council, these bumps are monuments to wasteful spending and immoral priorities.