Speed Humps Are Getting Out Of Control In Buffalo, New York

Way back in 2020, the City of Buffalo created a new program that was intended to help make things in some residential neighborhoods a little calmer.

The Slow Streets Program is set up to allow city of Buffalo residents a method to contact city officials to request a series of speed and traffic calming measures on their streets.

When those requests are received by the City of Buffalo's Department of Public Works, Parks & Streets, they then evaluate what's happening on that street or in the neighborhood and then suggest and install some sort of traffic calming device. Those devices can include street pole-mounted radar detectors, speed humps and bumps, and several other things.

Since this program was enacted three years ago, there has been an explosion of speed humps being installed on city streets. In the map that shows the location of every street hump in Buffalo, you can see that calming measures have really taken over a large chunk of the city's residential streets.

Applications were submitted to have speed humps installed on several dozen streets across New York's 2nd largest city, with them being installed in 4 separate rounds. As they are being installed on roads, residents are seeing a decrease in speeding cars.

However, the humps seem to have had an unintended consequence for people.

Speed Humps Are Extremely Annoying

While I understand that these humps are designed to force speeding drivers to slow down, those of us who like to follow traffic laws are feeling a tad bit perturbed.

I was scrolling on Facebook the other day, and it seems that I am not the only one who feels this way. I came across this meme, which perfectly describes how driving down some Buffalo streets feels.

How do you feel about the speed humps in Buffalo? Are they a necessary part of life, or are they just an irritating obstacle?