A 44-year-old Cypress Hills man took traffic safety into his own hands last week, installing four speed bumps near Miller and Arlington avenues using materials from his construction job. Boris Maces says he did it to protect neighborhood children from speeding cars.
Maces installed the bumps around October 17, saying he was concerned about speeding and frustrated by the city's lack of response, the New York Daily News reported.
Maces cited speeding as a concern on the block. As of publication, police had not responded to inspect the unauthorized bumps, and both City Hall and the New York City Department of Transportation had not returned requests for comment, the Daily News reported.
A City Process Known for Taking Years
New York City does have an official channel for requesting speed-calming measures: residents, elected officials and community boards can flag speeding conditions to the appropriate DOT borough commissioner for review, according to NYC DOT. But that process has a reputation for moving slowly. A review by Streetsblog NYC found that 204 speed humps installed by DOT in 2022 stemmed from 121 requests, 91 percent of which had been filed in 2019 or earlier — more than 41 percent dated back to 2016 or before. One Brooklyn council member told the outlet that DOT studies typically take two years to finalize, even as that same official's district had recorded 1,173 reported crashes so far that year as of November 11, 2022, including injuries to 87 cyclists, 141 pedestrians and 410 motorists.
That kind of wait has pushed other New Yorkers to similar frustration. Residents on East 57th Street in Flatlands say they have pushed for a speed bump on their block for more than a decade, according to CBS New York, with one petition rejected because officials said the block had too many driveways.
DIY Fixes Elsewhere Have Met Resistance
Maces is far from the only resident nationwide to bypass official channels. In Lincoln Park, Michigan, a man built his own speed bump out of store-bought asphalt after growing frustrated with speeding drivers, but police ordered him to remove it less than an hour later, ClickOnDetroit reported. In Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood, residents installed unauthorized speed bumps that were later removed, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It remains unclear whether police or DOT have since inspected the bumps Maces installed near Miller and Arlington avenues, or whether the city plans any formal response. The installation was a quiet act of defiance from a man frustrated by the city's lack of response.
