In her Thursday commentary requesting stop signs be added to Sixth Street at East Street, Barbara Noble wrote that I had achieved success in slowing traffic on Lincoln Boulevard. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My first meeting with city of Tracy officials and the police regarding speeders on Lincoln Boulevard was Aug. 28. From September to November, there were three accidents on Richard Drive and Lincoln and one at 12th Street and Lincoln. Two were serious: One of three drag racers lost control, and his car hit a pickup truck at 57 mph, sending a young girl to the hospital; in the other one, a speeding motorcycle slid, sending the rider to the hospital.

City officials say 940 cars use Lincoln daily. Of these, I estimate 50 to 100 travel well over 40 mph in this 30-mph zone. When a police speed trailer was posted on the street for nearly a month earlier this year, many cars were in excess of 50 mph and some just below 60 mph. I have photos of 13 of the many property-damage accidents that happen on the 1300 and 1400 blocks of Lincoln. Since 2004, my neighbors and I have unsuccessfully begged the city for help. Finally, the city traffic engineers in November presented the City Council with a solution — single stripes on both sides of Lincoln between the parking lane and the slow lane to psychologically slow drivers.

Will this slow the drag racers, the commuters who are running late and our nemesis, the West High School students who drive? Not a chance! They are not going to remark, “Oh, there’s a white stripe; we had better slow down.”

I contacted another community’s city engineer and explained our plight and what our city wants to do to help. She told me the parking stripe would do absolutely nothing to slow the offenders. I asked what her city would do. Her first choice was speed “humps” (large speed bumps). They are quite effective in situations like Tracy, she said. They are little or no problem to emergency vehicles or law-abiding drivers, I learned.

I have e-mailed the City Council, City Manager Dan Hobbs and City Engineer Kul Sharma, begging them to reconsider the decision to add stripes and do something to seriously confront the speed problem. As of yet, I haven’t even been given the courtesy of a response.

Good luck, Mrs. Noble. I hope you don’t have to wait two years to maybe get a solution to the traffic problem at your intersection.

Ron Pounding is a longtime Lincoln Boulevard resident.