College Township Council last week took a significant step toward addressing long-running traffic and speed issues in a Centre Hills Village neighborhood.
Council voted on Thursday to put out for bid a traffic-calming project to install a total of 14 Watts-style, or rounded, speed humps — seven each on Oak Ridge and Shamrock avenues — after a three-year process involving residents, traffic engineers and township officials. Township engineer Don Franson said it would take about a month for bids to come in and another month once a bid was awarded before construction began, which is expected to take about three weeks.
“This is something that can be done easily this summer if we want to go ahead with that,” Franson said.
The process began in 2020 when residents approached the township with concerns about increasing traffic and speeding incidents, mostly stemming from drivers using Squirrel Drive and neighborhood streets as a cut-through from East College Avenue to Branch Road. In addition to concerns about crashes, with no sidewalks along the streets, residents said they felt it was dangerous to go for a walk or run, ride bicycles, or take their kids to the school bus stop.
Some residents said the problems dated back decades but heightened in 2019, coinciding with Giant supermarket’s relocation from East College Avenue to a new store on South Atherton Street. Township data found that in March 2019 Oak Ridge Avenue saw an average of 922 vehicles per day traveling westbound (toward Branch Road). In October 2019, after the new Giant’s opening, that number ballooned to 3,334 vehicles per day.
A speed study found an average of 32.1 miles per hour in the 25 mile-per-hour neighborhood. But with increased traffic has come an increased number of speeding incidents.
That all came before construction of a 650-bed student apartment complex is completed just over the hill on Squirrel Drive, a development that was approved in 2021 and is expected to open later this year — bringing with it the potential for significantly more traffic.
In February 2020, council referred the issue to the Local Traffic Advisory Committee (LTAC), which worked with residents and a traffic engineer on a solution. Slowed by the onset of COVID-19 and involving extensive deliberations, the engineer’s recommendation of 14 speed humps was put to a vote of 145 neighborhood properties in February. Of the 112 ballots received, 80.4% were in favor of the recommendation, though only 33% of those were from Oak Ridge Avenue residents.
Township transportation engineer Trans Associates estimated the cost of the speed humps at about $5,000 each, or about $70,000 total.
The township has $80,000 for the project in its 2023 budget and negotiated a $50,000 contribution from Aspen Heights, the developer of the Squirrel Drive apartment complex. About $35,000 has been spent on engineering, Franson said, and another $5,000 will be needed for contract documents.
If a bid comes in at or under the budgeted amount, the contract will be a routine approval for council. If it is over budget, council will discuss further whether it can find the additional funds or bid alternates with fewer speed humps.
That was a point of lengthy debate on Thursday. At a meeting in February, council member Dustin Best suggested the township also bid alternates for fewer speed humps at the same time in case the 14 speed humps came in wildly over budget. Trans Associates developed configurations for 10 and eight speed humps (five and four on each street).
Council members Eric Bernier and Susan Trainor, along with several residents, said putting alternates out for bid along with the recommended proposal would be disrespectful to the LTAC process and the residents who participated, and that it would convey that the township wouldn’t fund anything beyond the budgeted amount.
“With all due respect, I think at a minimum it’s premature to make any adjustments to the plan before we see what the bid is,” Bernier said. “Even then… even if costs us a few more dollars… we’ve made adjustments in the budget on the fly for things we’ve deemed important and high priorities.”
Bernier suggested that if bids came back well over the budgeted amount, the township could explore what other funds it has available or negotiate with Aspen Heights for an additional contribution.
Best said the suggestion for alternate bids was a matter of efficiency in case the original proposal was over budget so that the township would know its options without having to go through the bid process again.
“To me and from my perspective, that just shows good fiscal responsibility for the township in ensuring that we haven’t gone way out of bounds with budget, just in case. I wholeheartedly support the 14,” Best said. “I hope it comes in at budget or within a reasonable amount to where we can extend that budget.”
Council President Carla Stilson said it was not a matter of disregarding the LTAC, which she served on, but that council has a responsibility to review the budget and options.
“I think we all respect the process. I think it’s a philosophical difference about what that process is,” Stilson said. “We get recommendations from planning commission, who spend many hours deliberating topics and make recommendations to us, and we take a second look at it. That is what we are doing. It is council’s responsibility to take a look.”
Some residents, though, said doing less than what a traffic engineer determined to be the solution would not be effective.
“I feel like when we ask an expert for advice and they tell us what will fix the problem, then we should listen,” Oak Ridge Avenue resident Beth McGraw said. “I’m worried that we have experts who have told us what it will take to even out the speed on our roads and to reduce cut through. If we start pulling out speed humps because we think it will save money, what you will end up doing is still spending quite a bit of money but not having something that’s effective and that will waste three years of time and effort, and trust that has been built with the local community.”
LTAC member and Oak Ridge Avenue resident Earl Moore said he appreciated the township being stewards of taxpayer funds, but that the proposal already does not include four pinch-points — narrowing of a road for traffic calming — that the engineer recommended. He added that the township did not consider the cheapest option for which many residents advocated early on: closing Squirrel Drive to through-traffic at the Oak Ridge Avenue intersection.
“Right now there’s a 600-bed apartment complex going in down below us,” Moore said. “That’s going to increase the population of this township by 5%. It’s going to put the population on Centre Hills at 8% of the population. And you guys are concerned about a few dollars to save lives on our street. That’s what bothers me.”
Council ultimately decided not to include the alternates in the resolution authorizing the bid, but will revisit the discussion if the bids are above budget.
