Claremont McKenna’s Speed Dots Fail to Make Campus Safer

Newly installed speed dots on Claremont McKenna's campus.

They are impossible to miss. Hundreds of small white dots have made a mess of Claremont McKenna’s walkways and unnecessarily impeded students’ travelling around campus. Despite assurances that these speed dots will create a safer campus for pedestrians and control the speed of vehicles, in practice they are a headache for campus commuters and a waste of the college's resources. 

CMC’s Executive VP and Chief Operating Officer announced the placement of the dots in an Aug. 30 email: “As an additional safety precaution, speed dot bands were added to 2 main campus pathways: (1) the north-south walkway adjacent to Parents Field that runs from 9th Street to 6th Street; and (2) the Arcade pathway approaching the Sports Bowl. Note that An [sic] ADA accessible route runs alongside each section of dots for use by individuals with accessibility needs.”

Not quite: The speed dots fail to meet the standards listed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Chapter 3 of the Public Right-Of-Way Accessibility Guidelines of the ADA states that the “continuous clear width of pedestrian access routes shall be 48 inches… minimum.” By the entrance of the CMS Sports Bowl arcade, there are two sets of bands that do not meet this guideline. Because the bands are staggered, there is no longer a continuous path available for people with accessibility needs such as wheelchair users or sight-impaired individuals. 

Speed dots near the Sports Bowl.

The speed dots’ main goal was to slow wheeled traffic. Unfortunately, not only do they fail to solve this problem, but they also create a more dangerous environment for pedestrians, disabled or not. A CMC wheelchair user described to the Claremont Independent the irritating situation that can occur when campus is busiest: Scooters and bikes don’t want to slow down over the bumps and instead funnel through the 48-inch dotless gap, blocking access to the strip and “almost plow[ing] me down.” 

I am not fully convinced there was ever a problem in the first place, either—the walkways were wide enough for bicycles and other wheeled vehicles to traverse without putting themselves or pedestrians in danger. If CMC is truly worried about commuters’ speed, an enforced speed limit would be a more effective fix. 

CMC has an entire office dedicated to the compliance of laws, including the ADA, in the CMC Accessibility Services (the office did not respond to a request for comment). If proper time and resources had been allocated for a speed reduction project, these mistakes could have been avoided and Accessibility Services could have scoped out potential issues in ADA compliance before hundreds of dots were cemented to the walkways. 

The speed dots are otherwise known as "Botts' dots," created in the 1950s as a solution to lane visibility concerns on California freeways. Originally designed as reflective lane markers, their bumpy quality added a second use: a jolting alert that your car is drifting into another lane. At one point, there were over 25 million Botts’ dots on California highways alone, but in 2017 Caltrans announced plans to retire the dots in favor of newer technology.

The deviation from their intended use is just another indication that this is a shortcut solution. However, it does not require any knowledge of the history of Botts’ dots to recognize that they are not being used for their intended purpose – simply try to walk over them on your way up from Roberts’ Pavillion. The dots are uncomfortable to walk over, and the only way to avoid them is the buffer zone on one side of the bands that is often used by bikes and scooters. The dots are spaced too close together to step in between them and the bands are too wide to step completely over them. The result is an unnecessary inconvenience for pedestrians trying to navigate through campus. 

Finally, the sloppy installation of the dots has marred our campus. The bands do not seem to follow any consistent pattern, either by Roberts or the Sports Bowl. In several cases, scars in the concrete show incorrect installation and reinstallation of some of the bands. In other areas, dots have become fully unattached from the ground and leave empty gaps.

With this poorly thought out solution, CMC has magnified a minor problem into an irritating blemish on our campus. Next time, CMC should consider the unintended consequences of its campus projects and seek student input to prevent more speed dot disasters.