Project History
Previous Research
Over the last decade, the LRRB has seen increased interest in traffic calming by city and county engineers. This parallels an increased interest expressed by elected officials and community residents. In response to this interest, the LRRB has funded several traffic calming research projects to help assemble and disseminate information to the state’s engineers.
Previous reports focused on the following aspects of traffic calming:
- Techniques being used, both locally and nationally
- Benefits and constraints associated with the various techniques
- Approximate implementation costs
- Presentation of before-and-after data for projects throughout the United States
- Collection, evaluation and presentation of before-and-after data for several test sites (both actual and simulated) within Minnesota.
2004 Research Focus
Over the course of developing these reports, it was determined that the variability in data collection techniques made it difficult to aggregate findings or make comparisons between projects.
Without established state engineering standards, many city and county engineers who are considering the implementation of traffic calming are spending time and energy locating communities who have constructed traffic calming projects, and inquiring about their experiences with various techniques. Even though many communities have not collected before-and-after data for their traffic calming projects, they can still provide valuable insight into the benefits and constraints associated with their projects.
Therefore, the 2004 research project was initiated to develop a traffic calming reference database that focused specifically on projects implemented in Minnesota. Another component of the research project was to develop guidelines for traffic calming data collection to better facilitate a consistent comparison of results between various agencies.
2007 Website and Database Update
When the website was initially developed, there was a desire by the TAP to have the website designed in a manner that would allow city and county engineers in Minnesota to directly input new traffic calming projects into the database on an on-going basis. This would enhance the functionality of the database by having it provide new and relevant data.
In 2007, the website was revised to incorporate the direct input of new projects into the database. As a way of introducing this new tool and updating projects in the database, a survey was sent out to all city and county engineers on MnDOT’s State Aid for Local Transportation distribution list, soliciting additional traffic calming projects to include in the database.
After the website revisions were made, on-going administration of the website was taken over by the University of Minnesota, Center for Transportation Studies.