Victor Tosti says lead-footed motorists have been the bane of his 21 years as a resident of Clearwood Road in Towson's Hillendale-Loch Raven Heights area.
"For years, I've noticed a lot of speeding traffic," Tosti said. He thinks some of the speeders are college students who live in the area.
And he said he's been concerned because children often play outside their homes on the residential street that runs for about 10 blocks between Oakleigh and Ridgewood roads.
But Tosti, 51, director of marketing for Windsor Mill-based Omni Eye Specialists, hasn't been able to do much about the problem. He said he called county officials about 10 years ago and they put up an electronic advisory sign along the road to show motorists how fast they were driving. But he said officials told him at the time that installing speed bumps as a traffic-calming measure wasn't warranted on Clearwood.
That opinion changed last summer, when Tosti contacted Baltimore County Councilman David Marks. Late last year, the county began monitoring the road, and now, the 1500 block, where Tosti lives, has received four speed bumps, at a cost to the county of $24,000.
"The project was approved after an engineering analysis determined that traffic met the right speed and volume to qualify for calming measures," Marks said in an email."Also, a neighborhood petition indicated support for the speed bumps."
Marks singled out Tosti for praise, saying Tosti worked with Marks' office and the county Department of Public Works to secure neighborhood approval for the initiative.
Tosti in turn praised Marks, saying, "He was a big help."
Tosti said that after the county approved the project, he still had to gather signatures on the petition from at least 75 percent of the residents in the 1500 block of Clearwood. He said he gathered 22 signatures, about as many as the number of households in the block.
"Once we got (permission) to have it done, everything happened in about three weeks," he said.
Tosti said he has already noticed cars slowing as they reach the speed bumps.
"It just helps slow people down a little," he said, adding that the speed bumps don't extend all the way across the street from curb to curb, "so you can park in front of your house."
Tosti said he cares so much partly because he was raised in Parkville and graduated from Calvert Hall High School and the then-Towson State University.
"I grew up in the area," he said. "I'm passionate about keeping the neighborhood safe."