In the U.S., two cities paved the way for traffic calming, Seattle, Washington and Berkeley, California. Berkeley adopted in 1975 a citywide plan to calm traffic. Seattle was successful in securing early funding for neighborhood street improvements in 1968 in the form of a $12-million bond issue, allowing Seattle to undertake a series of traffic calming studies and demonstrations. Today, "Seattle has more experience implementing more traffic measures than any other community in the United States."(2) One of the early demonstrations yielded some good information on what is important to accomplish when implementing traffic calming measures in a community:

• Testing complex area-wide treatments before implementing them permanently,
• Assessing public support for the treatment,
• Conducting before-and-after studies of traffic impacts,
• Including traffic accidents among the impacts studied,
• Working with emergency services to address their concerns, and
• Opting for the most conservative designs that will do the job.(2)

These tasks are still valid today and are good ones to consider when instituting traffic calming measures in any area.

Today many cities and towns in the U.S. have implemented some form of traffic calming and are experimenting and learning for themselves what works and does not. Many states and communities are developing or have developed their own guidelines for diagnosing troublesome areas and then implementing the proper traffic calming solution. (For examples goto: "How to Employ in Your Town.")