NDOT proposes seven sets of speed cushions for Hickory Woods Drive; neighborhood to vote

NDOT traffic engineer and consultant Amy Burch presented a plan Wednesday to install roughly seven sets of speed cushions on Hickory Woods Drive and said the neighborhood will vote on the final design by mail.

Burch said the project was selected after NDOT reviewed data from a citywide prioritization process that ranks requests based on speed, volume, trip destinations, non-driver accommodations and crash history. "The 80th percentile speed was measured at 33 miles per hour," Burch said, and the street carries about "3,400 vehicles per day." She described Hickory Woods Drive as a 36-foot-wide collector that feeds to Murfreesboro Pike and noted the segment discussed runs between Murfreesboro Pike and Sunnyvale Drive.

The plan shown to the neighborhood places seven sets of modular speed cushions spaced about 450 feet apart along the corridor. Burch said NDOT prefers speed cushions because they are modular, can be configured to allow emergency vehicles to straddle gaps, and have produced local reductions in measured speeds: "Average speed before" tests were about 31 mph…