Century Hills/Emerald Hills Traffic Signal
The much desired traffic signal at Viola Road and Century/Emerald Hills Rd has moved another step closer to being installed. A Professional Services Agreement was approved by the council at our 4/4/05 meeting to Yaggy Colby for the design of the signal.
The signal has been included in our 2005/6 CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) so the city is willing to pay it’s half of the estimated $200,000. We are simply waiting for the traffic volume statistics to meet the state’s “warrant” for a signal and the county traffic engineer has control over this. (Viola Road is a county road after all.)
Our public works traffic engineer and myself have been keeping on top of this and Mr Sheehan, the county engineer, has been most cooperative.
I’d like to tell you that it will be in yet this year but can’t but at least we’re moving in the right direction.
As always, feel free to contact me directly about any concerns you have in your neighborhoods or anything we’re doing concerning the city.
I’d be happy to visit with you and your neighbors anytime.
Bob
The signal has been included in our 2005/6 CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) so the city is willing to pay it’s half of the estimated $200,000. We are simply waiting for the traffic volume statistics to meet the state’s “warrant” for a signal and the county traffic engineer has control over this. (Viola Road is a county road after all.)
Our public works traffic engineer and myself have been keeping on top of this and Mr Sheehan, the county engineer, has been most cooperative.
I’d like to tell you that it will be in yet this year but can’t but at least we’re moving in the right direction.
As always, feel free to contact me directly about any concerns you have in your neighborhoods or anything we’re doing concerning the city.
I’d be happy to visit with you and your neighbors anytime.
Bob
posted by Bob Nowicki | 10:15 PM
7 Comments:
Bob, until you get the traffic light installed, the situation can be improved by getting the people at Schaeffer (sp?) to consider using car pools. They seem to have more traffic than the high school, and all seem to come at the same time.
May is National Bike Month. Bike-to-Work Week is May 16 - 20, 2005 and Bike-to-Work Day is Friday, May 20, 2005. Maybe if we all rode bikes instead of driving there would be less traffic. As a bonus gas prices may decline due to lower demand. :)
I agree with saving gas and riding bikes...but this intersection is too dangerous for bike traffic or walkers. You are taking your life in your hands every time you cross this intersection!
Thanks for your comments folks. Have some patience (I know - you've all been very patient for a couple of years). We are getting closer to getting our traffic signal and I'll keep trying to speed things up. In the meantime be careful. We're going to have the police out giving tickets this week and hope this will help for a while.
As a driver that uses this intersection every day I have unfortunately witnessed two accidents (and at least six other close accidents that I can recall)
Thanks Bob for listening to me this morning and for providing this "blog" to keep updated. I don't even know the name of the driver that was hit in the accident I witnessed last week - but I can't get the look on his face out of my head as he was crawling out of the passenger side of his car. He is lucky to be alive...
Let us know what we can do to help make this a safe intersection for all.
Bob,
Any new developments on this intersection? Even when the lights are flashing - drivers can still legally drive 40 mph - can this be changed to 25 or 30? Speed is definitely a problem.
So far nothing new. As I said before, it's dependent on reaching the state "warrent" criteria for traffic and we've been watching it closely. The county has control and it's up to their traffic engineer. Haven't had much change in the last couple of months relative to the traffic counts, especially now that it's vacation time, school is out, etc.
Speed limit is controlled by the state mostly and no way will they change it on a road like Viola.
People would ignore it anyway as they drive to meet the conditions. If a road is wide, smooth, good visibility, and relatively straight then we're lucky they don't drive 85. Sorry but that's how it is.
Bob
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