Viola Road/Cassidy/Century Hills Traffic Signal UPDATE

I finally had the meeting between the county and city regarding the status of the traffic signal at the Century Hills/Emerald Hills entrance on Viola road. Thank you to Assistant County Administrator Mary Callier, Commission President Paul Wilson, Commissioner Judy Ohly, County Traffic Engineer Mike Sheehan, County Public Works Traffic Design Engineer Kay Bieniek, City Traffic Engineer David Kramer, and city Traffic Accident Specialist Wayne Winter.

I think you've all heard this before but all signalization requires meeting "warrent" criteria set by the state before we would be allowed to install such signals. This is especially true to get any state funds to support such installation. (Signals cost between $250,000-$400,000 each). From a safety standpoint traffic signals do create traffic problems of their own kind and so the rationale is that before we create any other problems we need to be sure that it's of lesser impact that the situation we're currently facing. Does that make sense to you? I understand this but I've been tutored for the last 2 1/2 years by our traffic "experts".

In April of 2004 we were getting pretty close to meeting these warrents and that's when I started to really push for the signal. However, the paving and opening of the southern Century Hills access to West Circle Drive has greatly dropped the volume of traffic at the intersection to the extent that we have moved further from meeting the traffic signal warrent.

One of our major concerns was the Century HS student's use of u-turns at the intersection when traffic backs up at the school entrance. Our observations over the last two years has shown the students to use caution when making these u-turns. Our fear is that by posting a "no u-turn" sign at the intersection and ticketing offenders we might force them to make the turn further up Viola Road where the road is narrower and more dangerous. We are all aware of the law of unintended consequences I'm sure.

Our accident monitoring of the site also does not indicate taking any action at this time. The statistics are like those you'd hope for AFTER taking action such as what we'd been discussing.

The net is that we have engineering work done for the time when we meet state traffic signalization standards (warrents). We will continue to keep an eye on traffic patterns as new housing development continues and act when it is prudent to do so.

As always, feel free to call me if you have any further questions.

Parkwood Hills Entrance UPDATE

Several residents of Parkwood Hills expressed concern about the number of accidents at the entrance to Parkwood Hills. I asked for a meeting with the county folks who "own" the road. Thank you to Assistant County Administrator Mary Callier, Commission President Paul Wilson, Commissioner Judy Ohly, County Traffic Engineer Mike Sheehan, County Public Works Traffic Design Engineer Kay Bieniek, City Traffic Engineer David Kramer, and City Traffic Accident Specialist Wayne Winter for sharing their time and assistance this morning.

The net of the meeting is that we all agreed that we need to do something to reduce the number of rear-end collisions when making left hand turns into Parkwood Hills but the solution (or a realistic one) is still in the future.

Our number one solution would be to widen the road at the entrance to allow for a left hand turn lane and a bypass lane. The bike path on the north side of Viola precludes our doing this easily. After much discussion of alternatives we are going to look at widening the road on the south side but this will take a considerable amount of engineering --- work which we couldn't commit to doing yet this year.

One of the future projects looked at while discussing the sales-tax extention refernedum in October is improvement to Viola Road -- widening, curbs, and storm water drainage. This would be an opportune time to make the entrance change.

At this time, nothing is committed and we will continue to look for a way to address your concerns.

I've asked Mr. Winter to provide me with statistics on just who has been causing the rear-ending accidents. Because the frequency is largely during the school year, we suspect that they are Century HS students. If this is truly the case, I will take these statistics to Century HS and see if we can't do something to work with the students to prevent serious injury to themselves and others.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks.

Northern Viola Lane Neighborhood Watch

Many thanks to the residents of Northern Viola Lane for inviting me to their annual Neighborhood Watch picnic and meeting. What a fantastic group!

Kids had a ball with the moon walk, ice cream and the works. Everyone seemed to be busy being "neighborly" which is what this is all about.

Many thanks to Darrel Hildebrant, our Police Crime Prevention Specialist, for his on-going dedication to the Neighborhood Watch program and especially for his personal attention to meetings like last night's. Also thank to Officers Peck and Turk who stopped by to help out.

I especially had a great time answering questions and talking about the kind of things that the folks were interested in regarding city operations. Hope this was helpful to you. Thanks.

To everyone reading this, if you don't know your neighbors and would like to, call me and I'll help you get a Neighborhood Watch set up ... if you have any questions or problems about anything happening in your neighborhood, again, call me ... and finally, if you have any questions about anything we're doing in the city, call me. Perhaps I'll be able to find someone who knows what's going on!!

Stop Signs on 19th St and Wilshire Dr NE- UPDATE

I heard a number of residents express their concern about the corner of Wilshire Dr. and 19th Street NE at the National Night OUt picnic on August 2. There are two "Yield" signs there already but residents seemed to think that perhaps more needed to be done to address the speed of crossing traffic.

The next morning I talked to Mr. Kramer, our Traffic Engineer, and he agreed.

I'm very please to be able to announce that they'd been installed yesterday, August 18.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. As I said earlier in these pages, don't hesitate to contact me about your concerns or wait until you see me.

Who knows? Sometimes we get what you want done!

National Night Out Picnics -- Thanks

It was really great so see so many NNO picnics get organized in the great 5th Ward. Thanks to those of you who invited me to share time with you and to those who allowed me to "crash" their parties.

We had 18 picnics registered and a couple more that I discovered in my travels. I managed to make it to 11 this year before it got dark and you pitched tent. I will make a strong effort to attend any of yours that I missed next year if you want me to. Just let me know.

I think we shared some good info and even managed to solve a couple of neighborhood concerns, so thanks for talking to me.

As a reminder, don't wait until next year to get in touch with me about anything bothering you regarding our city operations, neighborhood concerns, what you read in the paper, or anything else. OK?