Speeding, and what can be done about it

The fastest thing that changes how people drive on a street is a patrol car sitting on it.

Asking for enforcement

Humble PD runs traffic enforcement and the non-emergency line is 281-446-7127.¹

Give them a street and a time of day. A patrol can sit on one street at 7:30 on a school morning. It cannot act on "people speed in Timberwood." The specific complaint is the one that gets a car sent.

How Humble PD handles that kind of request, and whether they will do it more than once, is not written down anywhere. Nobody here has asked and reported back.

A speed hump is not in the city code

The City of Humble's ordinances contain no traffic calming of any kind. No speed humps, no speed cushions, no process for requesting one, and no traffic study requirement.² Chapter 11 covers parking, truck routes, parades and enforcement, and stops there.

That does not settle whether the city ever installs them. It means there is no written process to follow, so the question is a phone call to Public Works, 281-446-2327.³ The answer either opens a door or closes this permanently.

Putting your own out is a misdemeanor. Section 10.01.005 makes it unlawful to erect any "fence, wall, hedge, structure or any other character of obstruction" over, on or across a street without a permit from the building official, and it makes the person who placed it and anyone who helped separately guilty.⁴ A neighbor reported being ticketed $200 for putting a speed bump out on a Timberwood street in August 2026.

The limit is 30, and the city did not set it

Humble's code sets no speed limit anywhere in it.² It defines an "official traffic-control map" as a drawing showing "all streets, alleys, speed limits, traffic movement regulations and prohibitions",² so the number for a given street lives on a map the city keeps.

Unless a sign says otherwise, state law governs: 30 miles per hour in an urban district on a street other than an alley, and 15 in an alley.⁵

A posted limit is a ceiling. An operator "may not drive at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances then existing",⁶ so 30 is not automatically legal past a bus stop at 7:30 in the morning.

Lowering it, and the floor of 25

The slowest lever of the three, and it only bites if enforcement follows it.

The city may alter a limit by ordinance "from the results of an engineering and traffic investigation."⁷ For a street off the state highway system it may go as low as 25 miles per hour if it determines the current limit is "unreasonable or unsafe",⁷ and that applies only to a two-lane undivided street,⁷ which every street here is. A new limit starts when the signs go up.⁷

A city that lowers a limit this way owes a report every year by February 1, to the state and on its own website, comparing two years of speeding citations, warning citations, and injury or fatal collisions on that stretch.⁷

Two problems get talked about at once

Separating them is what stops the conversation going in a circle, because they have different causes and different fixes.

Inside the subdivision the drivers are mostly neighbors. These streets do not carry anybody to anywhere else, so almost everybody on them lives here or is visiting somebody who does. No ordinance reaches that. It is also why each round of this goes looking for somebody from outside to blame and does not find one.

At the edges it is the freight corridor, and that is not neighbors at all. The land around Timberwood is held by Quasar Logistics IAH at 71.5 acres, Eastex 59 LP at 62.5 acres with a building going up now, Bolloré Logistics USA at 27.2 acres of freight forwarding, and Southern Pacific Railroad across 28 acres of rail corridor and right of way.⁸ See what is around us and what is being built.

Residents have raised the access question that goes with it: whether the road in and out was ever built to carry that traffic, and whether the railroad has an obligation to improve the crossing. This site cannot answer either one yet.

Where to say it

The city holds meetings and hearings on development and infrastructure, and the council dates are on the calendar. A room with residents in it is the only place the second problem above gets decided.

Still open

• Whether the City of Humble installs speed humps, and what it takes to get one. One call to Public Works settles it.
• How Humble PD handles a request for enforcement on a residential street, and whether it can be repeated.
• What the posted limit is on Timberwood streets. One look at a sign.
• Whether a speed study has ever been done on these streets, and what it found.
• Whether Union Pacific, or the city, has any planned work on the crossing and the road in and out. Residents describe the access as one way and say it was never built for the truck traffic it now carries.
• Whether the stop sign nearest the entrance is placed where the traffic engineering says it should be.