Citizen Input
A Jarratt resident spoke in favor of a semi-diverter that would prevent drivers from entering the neighborhood at Jarratt and Windsor. His primary concern was that speed cushions on Hartford would divert northbound traffic onto Jarratt.
A Leigh resident spoke against the Jarratt semi-diverter, expressing (among other things) concern that a Jarratt semi-diverter would send more traffic down Leigh.
A resident spoke against speed cushions near the intersection of Ethridge and Harris.
A resident spoke in support of a traffic circle at Gaston and Wooldridge.
News from the city
The city approved all-way stop signs at the following intersections:
- 33rd and Kerby
- Harris and Gaston
- Wooldridge and Hardouin
- Wooldridge and Westover
- Gaston and Shoal Creek
These should be installed within four weeks.
They also approved replacing the yield signs at Wooldridge and Gaston with stop signs. The stop signs will continue to face Wooldridge, so Wooldridge (not Gaston) traffic will be forced to stop.
City also said they can flip the direction of the two-way stops at the following intersections:
- Oakmont and 32nd
- Oakmont and 34th
The draft plan called for curb changes (squaring-off) at a number of intersections, e.g. 29th/Wooldridge and Northwood/Wooldridge. City said it would cost $900K (if contractors do it) or $450K (if the city does it) to make all those curb changes. That's much too expensive, so the city said "no" to the entire bucket of curb changes. The prices were not itemized.
Changes to draft plan
The
results from the draft plan survey suggested two obvious changes:
eliminating the Gaston semi-diverter and reducing the number of speed
cushions.
Given that the city approved a handful more stop signs, one strategy was to eliminate all speed cushions and instead push the city to install as many stop signs as necessary to calm our traffic. Right now, the city seems more flexible about stop sign placement than they were six months ago, when we first started the traffic calming project. In January, the city said none of our intersections qualified for additional stop signs. In the past few months, not only has the city approved the stop signs mentioned above, but they have installed new stop signs at Westover/Harris, 32nd/Harris, and 34th/Jefferson. Nonetheless, the working group decided it was unrealistic to rely solely on stop signs; although several of the neighborhood's requests have been accepted, several have also been rejected. The working group also decided speed cushions were more appropriate than stop signs on Northwood and 29th, where traffic volume is higher and most of those street's residents have already voted their acceptance of speed cushions in multiple surveys.
Here is what we ultimately decided (see the map below):
- Drop all proposed (Gaston) and requested (Jarratt) semi-diverters
- Drop all speed cushions except for the following:
- Northwood between MoPac and Wooldridge.
- 29th between Jefferson and Lamar.
- Wooldridge between 29th and Northwood
- Shoal Creek from 34th to 31st
- 31st from Shoal Creek to Lamar
- Mohle (only one speed cushion between Jefferson and Harris)
- 30th (only one speed cushion between Kerby and Harris)
- Add speed cushions at the dog park, i.e. on the 2600 and 2700 blocks of Shoal Creek, i.e. south of the formerly proposed Gaston semi-diverter
- Request pricing for the following curb changes, in the following decreasing priority:
- 29th at Wooldridge
- Claire & Wooldridge
- 34th at 35th
- Request stop signs at the following intersections:
- Wabash & 31st
- Jefferson & 32nd
- Jefferson & Ethridge
- Jefferson & Preston
- Westover & Kerby
- Claire & Wooldridge
- Jefferson & 30th
- 29th and Wooldridge
- 34th and 35th
If the Westover & Kerby stop sign is rejected, we will also add a single speed cushion on Westover between Jefferson and Harris.
Clickable map of recent stop sign requests and draft plan after the July 22 meeting. Click on each icon and shaded street for a description.
Next steps
The working group will meet again once the city has responded to our additional stop sign requests and the three curb improvement areas. Since the city representatives at the meeting are not responsible for that work, they were unable to commit to a date. We hope to have an answer within a week or two.
We do not plan to perform any more neighborhood-wide surveys. Once we believe the plan is ready, we will submit it to the city for an official vote.
