EDITORIAL: Las Vegas needlessly enforcing speed bump removal

In its purported quest to save time on emergency calls, it appears the Las Vegas Fire Department has plenty of time to waste — at substantial cost to businesses and property owners.

As reported Sunday by the Review-Journal's James DeHaven, fire officials have taken aim at speed bumps, which they claim can add as many as 10 crucial seconds to emergency vehicle response times. That's in contrast to favored speed humps, which are about 10 feet longer in travel length but an inch lower in height and might add only a few seconds to response times.

So, as Mr. DeHaven reported, for at least two years, the department has used the bump-related lag time figures and portions of the Southern Nevada Fire Code to justify fire inspectors' demands that hundreds of speed bumps be removed throughout the city. Fire Department inspectors have dinged 99 Las Vegas housing complexes and businesses for bump-related violations over the past two years. Fixing those tickets — either by removing the bumps or replacing them with humps — can cost as much as $20,000 per business.

Full disclosure: That's what the Review-Journal will pay to remove its parking lot speed bumps this month at the Fire Department's request.

Research from outside organizations and records obtained by the Review-Journal suggest the city has far better, cheaper alternatives. Most notably, designating more responses as high-priority and better equipping intersections could knock minutes — not a mere few seconds — off ambulance arrival times. Furthermore, the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Traffic Engineers conducted studies in three cities that show speed humps slowed firetruck response times by up to 9.8 seconds — all but identical to delays caused by speed bumps.

Presented with that figure, a spokesman told Mr. DeHaven that it definitely takes longer to roll over a speed bump and suggested the Fire Department's delay estimate might need to be revised to 20 seconds. How convenient.

Indeed, there is plenty more to this policy that doesn't add up. First, though speed bumps have been illegal in Las Vegas for more than 20 years, there was little enforcement until just the past two years. Why now? Mr. DeHaven noted that there's no discernible pattern to the speed bump removal push, and that Fire Department officials said they write up violations in the course of regular business fire inspections. They won't go out of their way to seek a speed bump's removal unless it's requested by a city ambulance crew. But given the cost of removal, it's not a leap for taxpayers to wonder whether someone out there is disproportionately benefiting from this crackdown.

And taxpayers are helping foot the bill. More than two dozen private property owners have sought at least $226,900 in city funds to install code-compliant humps since 2003. Three applicants happened to be friends or neighbors living near Councilmen Bob Beers and Bob Coffin and Mayor Carolyn Goodman.

Second, there's a highly arbitrary element to the policy. The fact that Clark County, North Las Vegas and Henderson are not rushing out to demand speed bump removal says a lot. Even if Las Vegas is successful in weeding out all the speed bumps within city limits, the obstacles will still exist in parking lots, apartment complexes, mobile home parks and the like all over the rest of the valley. It is an extremely costly burden on private parties, one the Fire Department really has a hard time justifying.

In fact, one spokesman told Mr. DeHaven that he wasn't even sure where the department got its trumpeted 10-second speed bump lag time estimate — which makes you wonder how the department, under scrutiny, then adjusted it to 20 seconds. Where's the cost-benefit analysis? In the department's zeal to reduce response times by 10 seconds, the removal of speed bumps will lead to faster driving by all others at all times of the day, all year long, thereby increasing the likelihood of accidents that will require emergency response.

Response times might decrease, but the number of responses will increase as a result of disappearing speed bumps. Instead of making it easier for ambulances to arrive at a scene, why isn't the city trying to ensure the ambulance doesn't have to come in the first place? Given the efforts of local first responders to promote pedestrian safety valleywide, this city initiative makes no sense.

This policy provides another example of why the city of Las Vegas has a reputation for being business unfriendly. The City Council should review this policy post haste. Are there examples where it's actually helped? If the council can't find evidence that this has done any good, then it should put the brakes on the practice at once.