John Bartlett, the city transportation engineer, outlined a proposed overhaul of Grand Rapids’ Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program on Dec. 4, saying the current resident-driven system will be replaced by a proactive, data-driven process that prioritizes locations using a neighborhood score, crash data and expanded traffic measures.

"The current program is completely resident driven," Bartlett said. "We're looking to create a proactive data driven process that tells us where to go and bring those potential solutions to neighborhoods." He described adding an equity component, sidewalk and transit proximity, and new traffic measures such as average speed, percent of vehicles exceeding the posted limit and a cut-through volume metric.

The department plans a public-facing GIS map that will show each roadway segment’s score and the category breakdown that produced it, enabling residents to see why a street ranks where it does. Bartlett said the program would continue to collect 80th-percentile speed and volume data but expand to a more holistic set of indicators and to publish post-construction measurements so the city can track device-specific effectiveness.

The pilot phase has encompassed two rounds of data collection covering 12 neighborhoods selected as the highest-scoring locations in each ward. Bartlett said the city will host neighborhood meetings to present data and conceptual designs prior to ballots, and neighborhoods that pass the vote will move to construction scheduling; projects will then be reevaluated and reprioritized on the GIS platform.

During questions, commissioners and the mayor urged additional scoring for walkability, bike connectivity and network continuity. The mayor recommended counting bicyclists and using the forthcoming $10 million road package to make a larger, bolder funding ask for traffic calming in the next budget cycle. Bartlett said larger or more expensive projects could be packaged as capital requests while smaller device-based projects would use annual program funds.

Bartlett described temporary deployments—materials that create temporary curb extensions or neighborhood traffic circles—to test designs before permanent installation, and noted tradeoffs: temporary vertical treatments are effective but loud and bolted into pavement; permanent installations are lower profile but may produce different driver behavior. He said temporary devices currently are about 30 inches tall, while permanent devices tend to be about 4 inches high.

Next steps include neighborhood outreach over the coming months, conducting additional speed and volume data collection, hosting public meetings for the 12 pilot locations and returning to the commission with funding requests and timelines.