The City of Knoxville tried building speed bumps and rumble strips. It put up new speed limit signs and in some cases, lowered speed limits. It even put police patrols on a rotation. But nothing seems to prevent lead-footed drivers from tearing through the city's neighborhoods and down its side streets.
So city officials are looking to residents of those neighborhoods for ideas.
Tonight in North Knoxville, the city's Engineering Department and Office of Neighborhoods will host the first of five community meetingsto mine the public for suggestions that might solve the speeding problem.
"Speeding on residential streets is among the top issues identified in every survey of concerns in Knoxville's neighborhoods," Neighborhood Coordinator David Massey says. "Due to limited resources, it is also one of the most challenging problems for any municipality to address."
The public input received during the five meetings, as well as ideas submitted on a web site, will be used to help city planners create a new "traffic calming" policy. A draft version of the policy is expected to be ready by early 2014 and officials hope to have a final policy ready sometime next spring.