Stepped-Up Enforcement Is Seen As Solution to Speeding Off of Scenic Drive

Representative Susie Byrd gave the following summary of the May 11th meeting regarding traffic speeding off Scenic Drive at Wheeling. A reconfiguration of the curving was recently tried as a mean to calm traffic.

"The meeting was held because of some questions and some dissatisfaction about the new fix to slow traffic coming off of Wheeling. I have heard the following and passed it along to the Traffic Department:

•The turn is too narrow and creates too many potential conflicts between cars coming off of Scenic and cars getting onto Scenic.
•The turn is not clearly identifiable to cars coming up to it. In response to this, we have painted the curbs.
•There is still speeding down Wheeling.

"I had Traffic go out and take a look at it and perform a second speed study. They determined the following:

•The new fix has moved about 25% of the traffic to other streets. This is not a lot of traffic compared to most streets because there were not many folks using this street to begin with.

•People are slowing down considerably to make this turn but are still at about the same speed as they descend towards Alabama.

•Traffic still does not have much concern about this because the speed study shows that 85% of drivers are driving the appropriate speed. They did note that there were one or two individuals who are just hauling it down that street. They recommend that rather than change anything, we just step up enforcement and I call PD to let them know that some of their officers from the Academy are part of the problem.

•Traffic also took a number of different sized vehicles, including very large trucks through the intersection and determined that any sized vehicle, except for a big rig, could take this turn, without wandering into the other lane if they are going at the appropriate speed.

•There is still tension between the folks that live in the immediate area on Wheeling
(between Dakota and Scenic) and the users of the street that are going east farther into the neighborhood. The folks on Wheeling are not still satisfied and would like us to again re-consider closing down access to the street from Scenic. The other folks have some concerns about the current fix but don't want us to close down access. There were some suggestions to add a stop sign at Dakota and Wheeling and to reduce the speed limit. The traffic department cannot do any of these as they are bound by strict state requirements and these requirements would not allow for a reduction in the speed limit or a stop sign where it is not warranted by the traffic analysis.
•Traffic indicated that maybe the best thing to do was to really step up enforcement in this area. In response to the meeting, I committed to the following:

1. I use that street a lot and have not had problems with it, but I told folks that I would go out and observe the intersection to see if there was anything that set off alarms in terms of too many close calls at the intersection.

2. I would ask PD to step up enforcement and remind them that folks at the training academy should not be speeding down that street.

3. We would also look at some signage to alert folks to the turn and also to alert them to the speed limit down Wheeling."