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.
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.
posted by Bob Nowicki | 3:40 PM
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