How do we add speed humps or other traffic calming on our private HOA streets?

By OurHOA · General information · Revised September 29, 2026

How an HOA board adds speed humps or cushions on private streets: speed data, fire marshal sign-off, spacing, MUTCD signs, owner survey wording and a timeline.

Part of the HOA board handbook: vendors, projects and upkeep.

The short answer

Measure speeds first, then pick the device, then get the fire code official to approve it in writing, then survey owners, then vote at an open meeting and install. On a residential street with a posted limit of 30 mph or less, a well-placed series of 12-foot speed humps, or speed cushions on the route the fire trucks use, is the standard tool. Short parking-lot speed bumps are the wrong tool for a through street. Everything below assumes the streets are private and owned or maintained by the association. If the city or county owns the pavement, the association cannot install anything there and has to go through the local traffic calming program instead. Rules vary by state, by city and by your governing documents, so treat this as education, not legal advice.

Get speed data before anyone argues about humps

Complaints are not data, and a survey goes better when the board can show numbers. Traffic engineers judge a street by its 85th percentile speed, the speed that 85 percent of drivers stay at or under. Get one of three things. Ask the city or county whether it will lend or place a counter. Rent pneumatic tube counters for a week from a traffic data vendor. Or buy or rent a radar speed feedback sign that logs every reading. The MUTCD covers that sign as the Vehicle Speed Feedback sign, W13-20, in section 2C.13, so a sign you buy for data can stay up as a permanent device. Record at least a full week, including a school morning and a weekend, at two or three spots on the street people complain about. Write down the daily vehicle count too. FHWA's traffic calming ePrimer notes that jurisdictions cap speed humps at modest volumes, for example 3,500 vehicles a day in Pennsylvania and 4,000 in South Carolina, and treat humps as a poor fit where the 85th percentile speed is 45 mph or more. Most HOA streets are far under those volumes, which is exactly why humps work there.

Pick the device: bump, hump, cushion or table

These words mean different things, and bids go wrong when the board uses them loosely. A speed bump is 1 to 2 feet long and can be up to 6 inches high. FHWA places it in parking lots and commercial driveways, not public streets, and the MUTCD notes that bumps slow traffic more severely than humps. A speed hump is about 12 feet long in the direction of travel and 3 inches high, sometimes up to 4. FHWA says a single hump brings speeds down to 15 to 20 mph at the hump. A speed cushion has about the same height and length, but with gaps sized so a fire engine can straddle the raised parts while a car cannot. A speed table is roughly 20 feet long and flat in the middle. For most HOAs the decision comes down to humps on quiet interior streets and cushions on the main entry road or any street the fire department calls a primary response route, which is where FHWA says cushions are often preferred. Ask bidders to price both asphalt construction and prefabricated bolt-down units, and to state the expected life and upkeep of each in writing.

Placement rules that keep the humps useful

One hump slows cars at one spot. FHWA reports that the effect fades by about 0.5 to 1 mph every 100 feet beyond roughly 200 feet on either side, so a long straight street needs a series. The ITE guidelines cited in the ePrimer space humps 260 to 500 feet apart to hold the 85th percentile speed between 25 and 30 mph. Put the first hump within about 200 feet of a stop sign or a tight curve so nobody hits it at full speed. Keep humps midblock, not near an intersection. Pennsylvania's example is 150 feet from an unsignalized intersection. Avoid curves with a radius under 300 feet and grades steeper than 8 percent. Stop the hump about a foot short of the curb so gutters still drain, and have the engineer look hard at any street that drains down a center valley gutter. Check for streetlights, driveways, manholes and valves before marking locations. Ask your snow contractor, if you have one, how their plow blades handle the profile. A hump under a dark stretch of street or in front of someone's driveway apron will generate complaints for years.

Get the fire code official's approval in writing

Many local fire codes are based on the International Fire Code, and section 503.4.1 of the IFC says traffic calming devices are prohibited unless approved by the fire code official. Local amendments can be much stricter. Clark County, Nevada, allows speed humps on private fire access roads only for commercial and industrial buildings, and residential private streets there are limited to low rumble strips. Ask your own fire marshal's office what it allows before you design anything. Send them the speed data, a street map with proposed locations, and the device detail sheet. Expect questions about the primary response route, the profile, and signs. They care because the delay adds up. FHWA puts the typical delay per hump at 3 to 5 seconds for a fire truck and as much as 10 seconds for an ambulance carrying a patient, which is why cushions exist. Do not bid the job until you have a signed approval letter or an approved plan. If the streets connect to a public road, ask the city's traffic engineer whether anything near the entrance needs a permit.

Signs, enforcement and the state rules

The MUTCD applies to streets open to public travel whether the owner is public or private. It does not apply to roadways inside private gated properties where public access is restricted at all times. For an open community, section 2C.27 says the SPEED HUMP sign, W17-1, should go in advance of each hump or series, with an Advisory Speed plaque, and sections 3B.29 and 3B.30 cover the pavement markings. A gated community falls outside the MUTCD, but the same signs cost little and match what drivers expect. Humps do not give anyone a ticket, and state law decides who can enforce the posted limit. In Texas, Transportation Code section 542.008 lets a city of 300 or more extend its traffic rules to privately maintained subdivision roads by ordinance, on petition of 25 percent of the owners or on request of the association that maintains the roads, and section 542.007 does the same through the commissioners court in unincorporated areas of counties with 500,000 or fewer people. Either body can make owners pay part or all of the cost. In Florida, section 316.006 lets a city or county take traffic jurisdiction over private roads by written agreement, and a chapter 720 HOA board may, by majority vote, elect to have state traffic laws enforced by local police on roads the association controls. In Colorado, section 38-33.3-302(1)(g) of the Common Interest Ownership Act lets an association make additional improvements to the common elements, subject to its declaration. Your declaration may still require an owner vote for improvements over a dollar limit, so read it before the board acts.

Owner survey and board motion you can copy

Survey every owner on the affected streets, and the whole community if it all pays. Keep it to one question plus a comment box. Sample question: 'Speed counts on Oak Ridge Drive from May 4 to 11 showed an 85th percentile speed of 34 mph against a 25 mph posted limit. The fire marshal has approved three speed cushions at the locations on the attached map. Estimated cost is $X, paid from the operating budget. Do you support installing them?' Give owners 14 to 21 days and publish the result. Then put the project on the agenda of a noticed open board meeting. Sample motion: 'Move to approve installation of three speed cushions on Oak Ridge Drive at the locations approved by the fire marshal on June 2, with W17-1 signs and advisory speed plaques, from the bid of ABC Paving for $X, and to add the cushions to the reserve study at the next update.' Put the fire marshal's letter, the speed data and the survey tally in the minutes.

A sample timeline

Week 1: the board logs complaints and assigns one director to the project. Weeks 2 to 4: speed and volume counts at three locations. Weeks 5 to 8: device choice, a location map, and submission to the fire code official. Weeks 9 to 11: owner survey, open for 14 to 21 days. Week 12: bids from two or three paving or traffic contractors, with the approved plan attached. Week 14: vote at an open meeting. Weeks 16 to 20: installation in dry weather, with signs and markings the same day. About 60 days after installation, repeat the speed count at the same spots and report the before and after numbers to owners. That count shows whether the money worked.

Mistakes boards make

Buying parking-lot speed bumps for a through street is the classic one. FHWA treats them as parking-lot devices. The second is skipping the fire marshal and then removing humps the department never approved. The third is installing one hump and calling it a program. Speeds recover within a few hundred feet. The fourth is blocking drainage at the gutter line, which puts water on the pavement and shortens its life. Last, boards forget the long-term cost. Humps need restriping, sign replacement, and rebuilding at every mill and overlay. Add them to the pavement plan in our guide on how to plan an HOA street repaving and sealcoat program. If owners are still asking whether the association has the authority to do this at all, point them to our guide on whether an HOA can install speed bumps or a gate on a private street.

Sources

These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.

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