The city installed a “speed bump” on Bluebird Canyon Drive to respond to someone’s request for such a product on a residential street, I presume. The objective, I suppose, was to cause a needless obstruction in the flow of traffic. Let me point out the actual results:
1. It’s an eyesore. It’s a shiny black lump of tar on the road.
2. It’s a noise pollutant. It’s obscenely loud. Car and truck tires screech, crossing over the thing. Cars honk in disapproval. The noise pollution affects the folks and birds who live by it.
3. It’s a cause of physical pollution. The fluorescent yellow stickers constantly fall off and scatter everywhere.
4. Large trucks rumble over it, causing massive vibrations to the home beside it.
In addition:
A. It’s potentially lethal. Cars drive into the shoulder at speed to avoid it. A pet and owner walking out the gate recently had to pull back quickly to avoid being hit by a car.
B. If the objective is to slow down cars and electric bikes, it doesn’t work. In fact, the kids on bikes use it as a launching pad and accelerate over it to gain air time. Some cars do the same, and others just honk in frustration and either drive on the shoulder or just speed over the thing.
C. All the neighbors, save one, hate this thing. As the owner of the property that it’s in front of, I receive misguided animus and hatred as if I was instrumental in installing this useless eyesore. I assure all residents that I was unaware of the installation plan and would have objected if I knew.
D. The only vehicles I’ve seen that slow down are fire engines and ambulances, emergency vehicles you don’t want slowing down.
A few yards down, there is a stop sign, so the position is not where cars were ever speeding up. Unless appeasing a barking resident counts, there is not one useful thing it does, but it achieves plenty of negatives. If the city feels that it positively has to install this speed bump, there is a site in front of the tennis court and water tank on Bluebird where the eyesore would have had no impact on any property owner. Is there a reason that location was not used?
The city has a precedent for correcting errors on this street. Last summer, they spent weeks and money painting white-line parking boxes up and down Bluebird. It was a waste of city resources, as they soon discovered, and so six months later, they painted over them. They need to remove this ridiculous and useless contraption, too.
Michael Burke, Laguna Beach
