EVERETT, Wash. — An Everett homeowner says noisy cars speeding through his neighborhood is ruining the quality of life for himself and his neighbors.
Now, he's calling on the city to do something about it.
Luis Burbano is building a food forest in his backyard to feed his family.
He believes in sustainable living and spends much of his time working the land outside his south Everett home, but he says there is nothing sustainable about the traffic he has to put up with.
"You cannot have dinner without hearing the VROOOOM," he said. "Sometimes the cars wake up my family and my daughter. In the middle of the night, I am awake, my wife is awake, my kid is awake and my dog is barking. It's a problem for us. It really affects our quality of life."
Four years ago Burbano set up a camera in his house and pointed it at the street outside, Dakota Way.
Every few hours, Burbano says the traffic along Dakota Way sounds more like a speedway.
"Like the Daytona 500," he laughed.
Burbano has sent dozens of emails to the city pleading for speed humps or road modifications.
The city did put up a few radar speed signs, police wrote a few tickets and public works removed the center line from the street, which is designed to slow speeds, but the problem persists.
"It's really discouraging. I feel like the city let everyone down. I feel abandoned," Burbano said.
City Traffic Engineer Corey Hert says modifying the street would be too expensive, costing at least $15,000 to $20,000.
He says speed humps are noisy, slow emergency vehicles and people tend to drive too fast after they pass through them.
"Here in Everett we haven't installed a speed hump in 30 years," said Hert. "Some cities use them. In Everett, we have chosen not to."
Everett police are understaffed and non-emergency matters like noisy trucks don't have a high priority, right now.
Enforcement on an issue like this can prove tricky because, in order to ticket a speeding or noisy driver, they have to be caught in the act by police.
Asked if residents on Dakota Way will just have to live with it, Hert replied, "We're doing what we can to keep speeds down and do the enforcement necessary."
Burbano, a Boeing engineer, started looking at the bigger picture, crunching WSDOT numbers for Seattle, Everett and the similarly sized city of Renton.
He found that in 2020, Everett had three times the number of traffic fatalities per capita as Renton and four times those in Seattle.
Hert said the city has recently made improvements to slow drivers down and make the streets safer.
He pointed to a stretch of Evergreen Way at 112th Street where the speed limit was just lowered from 50 to 40 miles per hour.
"Our top priority is the safety of cyclists and pedestrians," Hert said. "Unfortunately, this isn't just an Everett problem. It's everywhere."
As Burbano finishes up working in his yard, he takes his 2-tear-old daughter by the hand and leads her back inside, hoping for a peaceful night.
"I just go to bed and cross my fingers," he said.