Speed cushions to be removed on Highland Drive after residents complain of noise disruptions

Speeding is an issue in the Dover Shores and Mariners neighborhoods of Newport Beach, but for at least a dozen residents living near 1911 Highland Drive, city-installed speed cushions aren’t the answer.

A few years ago residents concerned for the safety of their children reported to city officials that motorists were traveling through their streets at high speeds. A traffic study was conducted in 2019, and in July 2021 about 15 of the cushions — shallow speed bumps designed to allow emergency vehicles to pass unimpeded while still slowing passenger cars — were installed throughout the neighborhoods.

After the installations were complete, cars were slowed by 3 to 9 miles per hour as they passed over the cushions, according to a staff report prepared for Tuesday’s City Council meeting. But some Highland Drive residents complained the cushions did little to slow speeding drivers and that the noise made when vehicles traveled over them was unacceptable.

Newport Beach resident Lisa Ackley, who lives directly adjacent to where some speed cushions are installed, brought videos to the meeting to illustrate the point. Ackley said she and other neighbors regularly hear vehicles shifting gears and accelerating, tires striking the cushions and vehicle loads being jostled.

She and a dozen other residents submitted a petition requesting the removal of the speed cushions on Highland Drive.

Speed cushions installed on Highland Drive in the Mariners neighborhood in Newport Beach, installed in July last year, will be removed because of neighborhood noise complaints.

(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

“The noise really takes its toll on all of us and can be heard throughout our home and yards. It can disrupt work calls. It has disrupted work calls, Zoom meetings, even with the windows closed,” Ackley said. “We don’t have insulation. We don’t have mature trees. We don’t have a wall.”

Ackley said one of her neighbors across the street has trees but that they don’t provide an adequate sound buffer.

“It’s really impacted our lives. We don’t sit on our front porch. We just feel ... ‘un-peaceful,’ is the best way I can say it,” Ackley said.

“None of us are noise wimps,” said Laurie Lane, a neighbor of Ackley’s. “We live under the flight path. We are used to a lot of noise. We’ve also lived through the ever-increasing construction traffic due to all the remodels being done in the neighborhood, but the sound from these speed mats are unlike anything else we’ve experienced. It’s nonstop, round the clock.”

Lane described the sound as unpredictable and jarring.

With council direction, public works director Dave Webb confirmed Thursday that staff will remove one of the speed cushions on Highland Drive and work with residents on Dover Drive about a speed cushion there that drew a similar noise complaint.

The other 13 cushions will remain in place for the time being.

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