City of Jacksonville Beach Traffic Management

City of Jacksonville Beach Traffic Management Policy

Traffic Management is a top concern for residents and elected officials in Jacksonville Beach. The City faces challenges to ensure the safety of the motoring public, to include residents and visitors. The City has numerous high-volume roadways, and vehicular traffic is steadily increasing, placing more pressure on an already strained transportation system. This pressure has now caused secondary roadways to experience higher traffic volumes.

The Police Department has finite resources and must direct them to where they are most needed. The Police Department, however, is committed to evaluate each traffic complaint using data to validate or not validate the alleged infractions. This section will codify the process to evaluate traffic complaints, and it addresses other issues of note that will assist in explaining the traffic strategy to citizens and elected officials.

Goal:

To attain voluntary compliance of traffic laws by the motoring public to make them safer.

Objectives:

Direct finite traffic enforcement resources to where they are most needed;
Identify causes and locations of injury crashes;
Direct enforcement to decrease injury crashes;
Identify high-crash locations;
Direct enforcement to high-crash locations;
Educate the public about traffic safety and traffic management; and
Through data analysis, differentiate between actual traffic infractions at complaint locations and the perception of traffic infractions at complaint locations.

Procedures: The procedures below will be followed to address traffic complaints from citizens.

The traffic complaint may be formal or informal and can be received in any manner by the Police Department (e.g., email, call, referral, etc.);
An informal complaint is defined as a one-time and/or nonspecific complaint (as to time of day, day of week, etc.), and based on the totality of circumstances, does not require a traffic survey;
The informal traffic complaint will be assigned to a squad(s) or the entire patrol division to take some kind of action and will usually be documented in both directions by email;
The informal traffic complaint’s actions should have an expiration date and should not be open ended;
A formal complaint is defined as multiple and/or specific complaints and based on the totality of circumstances requires a traffic survey to be completed;
The formal complaint will be referred to a traffic officer to complete a traffic survey. The survey may consist of a sample(s) of data from electronic devices or personal observation (whichever is most appropriate) for the applicable period of time. Traffic crash data from that location will be analyzed, and the Traffic Officer will also consult the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (US DOT).The manual can also prove useful with school zone complaints. The traffic officer will then forward the results and his/her recommendation to the Division Commander. The Division Commander will forward the recommendations to the Chief of Police. If the violations are found to exist, actions may include (but not be limited to) increased enforcement, signage, or engineering action involving the Public Works Department. If the violations are proved to be merely perceived violations by the complainant, no further action will be taken. In both cases, the complainant will be notified of the results; and
If the complaint is excessive speed at a location, speed data will be accumulated, and if the 85th percentile of the vehicle traffic is not found to be in violation of the posted speed, no further action will be taken, and the complaint will not be revisited for six months per department policy .If the 85th percentile requirement is met, appropriate enforcement action will be taken.

Speed Bumps/Humps

Speed bumps/humps are not an approved method of traffic control for the City. Speed bumps are often mentioned as a solution to slow down drivers on residential streets. Many times speeding is only a perceived problem that electronic monitoring data does not support. Also, many times the VOLUME of traffic on a residential street is perceived as a speeding problem.

The installation of speed bumps/humps may also result in the following problems/issues:

Increased noise level where installed from drivers slowing down and speeding up. Noise is also caused by the vehicle going over the speed bump;
Reduces response times for emergency vehicles;
Diversion of traffic to other roadways, resulting in the demand for speed bumps/humps on those roadways;
Drivers attempt to partially avoid them by driving on the extreme right side of the road, traveling over or into lawns and private property. This also endangers the very people the speed bumps are intended to protect;
Damage to vehicles;
Other residents of the street or neighborhood may not want them;
Defining objective criteria of where to install them. Nationally, many are installed for political purposes only to eliminate complaints;
Defining objective criteria of where and when to remove them, should they be ineffective or the residents’ desires change; and

City of Jacksonville Beach Traffic Management