To get a speed bump installed on your street, you contact your city’s transportation or public works department, gather signatures from a supermajority of your neighbors on an official petition, and submit it with a formal application. The city then runs its own traffic study, consults fire and police, and decides. Start to finish, expect six months to a year, sometimes longer. One terminology note before you call: on public streets, cities install speed humps, not speed bumps. Speed bumps are the short, steep ones you find in parking lots. Using the right term on your application signals you’ve done your homework.
A standard speed hump is about 12 feet long in the direction of travel and 3 inches high at the center, with a curve gradual enough to cross at 15 to 20 mph without a jolt.1Federal Highway Administration. Toolbox of Individual Traffic Calming Measures Part 2 That’s the device you’ll be requesting.
Check Whether Your Street Qualifies
Before you knock on a single door, find out if your street is even eligible. Cities reject applications outright when the street fails their criteria, no matter how many signatures come with it. The specifics vary by city, but most programs draw from the same Institute of Transportation Engineers guidelines the Federal Highway Administration references.
Street Type
Speed humps go on local residential streets and residential collector streets. They don’t go on arterials, major thoroughfares, or designated truck routes.2Federal Highway Administration. Module 3 – Toolbox of Individual Traffic Calming Measures Part 1 If your street is the main way people get from a neighborhood to a shopping area, it probably won’t qualify. Your city’s transportation department can tell you how your street is classified.
Speed Limit and Traffic Volume
The posted limit generally must be 30 mph or less. The ITE guidelines also advise against speed humps where the 85th percentile speed (the speed at or below which 85 percent of drivers travel) already exceeds 45 mph, because drivers can lose control crossing a hump at that speed.1Federal Highway Administration. Toolbox of Individual Traffic Calming Measures Part 2 Most cities set a maximum daily volume, typically 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles, and sometimes a minimum, since a dead-end street with 50 cars a day isn’t worth the expense.
Grade, Curves, and Buses
Speed humps are recommended only on streets with a grade of 8 percent or less; some cities use 5 or 6 percent. Sharp curves (a radius under about 300 feet) are usually excluded, and humps have to sit away from intersections — a common guideline is 150 feet from an unsignalized intersection and 250 feet from a signalized one. One more filter: if long-wheelbase vehicles like buses or large trucks make up more than 5 percent of traffic, that alone can disqualify the street.1Federal Highway Administration. Toolbox of Individual Traffic Calming Measures Part 2 A bus route running down your block is often a dealbreaker for standard humps.
Get Your Neighbors on Board
Nearly every city requires a petition showing that a strong majority of households on the affected block want humps. The threshold varies. Some cities require two-thirds (about 67 percent). Others set it at 70 or 75 percent. Your transportation department’s website will list the exact number and usually provides a downloadable petition form.
This is where most requests stall. You need signatures from residents on both sides of the street along the entire segment where humps would be placed, and many programs count one vote per household regardless of how many people live there. A few practical moves:
- Designate a block representative early. This person becomes the city’s single point of contact and keeps the process moving. Bureaucracies work better when they have one name and one phone number.
- Go door to door. Mailed flyers get ignored. A neighbor at the door with a pen, the petition form, and a one-page summary gets signatures.
- Hold a short block meeting. Thirty minutes in someone’s driveway lets skeptics ask questions and often converts them. Expect concerns about noise, emergency response delays, and property values.
- Document carefully. Full name, address, and signature on the official form. Incomplete entries get thrown out during review.
File the Application
Once the petition clears the threshold, submit it with a formal application to your transportation or public works department. Some cities take applications through an online portal; others still want a mailed or hand-delivered package. The application typically asks for the block representative’s contact information, the specific street segment, and the signed petition.
Watch the calendar. Some programs only accept applications during specific windows a few times a year, so check the schedule before you start collecting signatures. Missing a window can mean waiting months. A short cover letter explaining the speeding problem and any supporting details (near-miss incidents, a nearby school or park, photos) doesn’t hurt, but the city’s decision will rest on the traffic data, not your narrative.
What the City Does Next
Once the application is accepted, the city runs its own evaluation. This is the part you can’t rush.
The Traffic Study
A city traffic engineer places monitoring equipment on your street to measure actual vehicle speeds and daily volume. The independent data determines whether the street meets the thresholds — what your neighbors say about speeding won’t matter if the numbers come back inside the posted limit. The study may also review collision history, distance to schools and pedestrian paths, and nearby bicycle facilities.
Emergency Services Sign-Off
Fire and police get a say. Speed humps slow emergency vehicles, and the delay compounds along a street with multiple humps. Research on fire apparatus found delays of up to 9 seconds per hump for large ladder trucks, with smaller rescue vehicles less affected. If your street is a primary emergency response route, a fire department objection can kill the project or push the city toward speed cushions instead. Speed cushions are humps with gaps cut to match a fire truck’s wheelbase; regular cars still hit the raised sections, but fire apparatus straddles the gaps and passes without slowing. Field tests show they cut 85th percentile speeds about 9 mph, close to a full speed hump, with little to no delay for fire vehicles.3Federal Highway Administration. Module 5 – Effects of Traffic Calming Measures on Non-Personal Vehicle Traffic If fire is the roadblock, this is often the compromise that gets you an approval.
How Long It Takes
Expect six months to a year from application to installation, and sometimes longer. The traffic study alone can take weeks to schedule and complete. Many cities keep a priority list ranked by severity, so a street with documented crashes or a school zone will jump the queue. Budget cycles matter too — an approved project can sit until the next fiscal year’s funds come through.
What It Costs You
A single speed hump runs roughly a few thousand dollars installed, counting materials, labor, and signage. The exact figure depends on the design, local labor costs, and whether drainage needs adjustment. Most streets need multiple humps to keep speeds down along the whole block, since the calming effect fades at roughly 0.5 to 1 mph for every 100 feet past a hump.1Federal Highway Administration. Toolbox of Individual Traffic Calming Measures Part 2 Total project cost climbs quickly.
In many cities, the transportation budget covers the whole bill. Others split costs with residents or require the neighborhood to pay entirely. A few cities require a privately funded traffic study before they’ll even accept the application, and that study can cost several thousand dollars on its own. Ask about fees upfront. Finding out about a cost-sharing requirement after you’ve gathered 75 signatures is demoralizing.
If Approved
The city schedules installation, which is a straightforward paving job that usually takes a day or two per hump. Each hump gets a warning sign (the standard “SPEED HUMP” W17-1) and typically an advisory speed plaque.4Federal Highway Administration. MUTCD 2009 Edition Chapter 2C – Warning Signs and Object Markers When humps sit close together, the advisory plaque may only appear on the first sign in the series.
If Denied
The city will tell you why. The two most common reasons are that the traffic study showed speeds or volumes below the thresholds, or that emergency services objected. A denial isn’t necessarily permanent. If conditions change — new development, a crash, a new school nearby — you can reapply. Some cities impose a one- to two-year waiting period before accepting a new application for the same street.
Private Roads and HOA Streets
If your street is privately owned and maintained by a homeowners association, this whole process doesn’t apply. You don’t petition the city. You go through the HOA board. The board usually has authority to install traffic calming on common-area roads, but governing documents may require a membership vote for changes to common areas. Read your CC&Rs before assuming the board can act on its own.
Even on private roads, the installation has to meet real engineering standards, and in many jurisdictions the local fire marshal must approve any traffic calming device on a private road. Some states restrict or prohibit speed bumps on private roads outright, particularly where emergency access is a concern. Confirm with the local fire department and building code office before spending money on installation.
Trade-Offs Worth Raising Before You Petition
Speed humps solve the speeding problem, but they come with side effects that neighbors will bring up. Getting ahead of these during the petition phase is easier than answering them after installation.
Noise
Braking before a hump and accelerating after it generates more noise than steady-speed traffic. Research consistently finds traffic calming devices produce higher noise levels than unmodified road sections, and speed humps tend to be noisier than speed tables because they force sharper deceleration. Homes next to a hump hear the cycle all day, and it’s worse with heavy vehicles and motorcycles.
Diversion to Other Streets
Some drivers will just use a parallel route instead. That’s partly the point, since lower volume means fewer speeding opportunities, but if the parallel route is another residential street, you’ve moved the problem to your neighbors. Cities are aware of this and may study diversion patterns during review. On streets that connect two busier roads, diversion is close to guaranteed.
Emergency Response Delays
Each hump adds seconds to emergency response times. A street with four or five humps in sequence can add 20 to 40 seconds to a fire truck’s travel time on that block. In a cardiac arrest, those seconds count. This is the objection most likely to sink an application, and it’s the reason speed cushions exist as a fallback.
Property Values
Research on the property value question is mixed but generally reassuring. A study of over 1,100 traffic calming installations in Portland, Oregon, found the average effect on housing prices was statistically indistinguishable from zero. Streets where traffic calming actually reduced volume by 16 percent saw home values rise about 1 percent. Living directly next to a hump may play differently with individual buyers, but the neighborhood-level effect appears negligible.