Work Set to Begin on Centre Hills Village Traffic Calming Project

Work on a long-awaited traffic calming project in the Centre Hills Village neighborhood of College Township is set to get underway.

The project will install 14 speed humps — seven each on Oak Ridge and Shamrock avenues — beginning Tuesday, according to the township.

Mid State Paving, which was awarded the contract in June with a low bid of $103,477, will construct the traffic calming measures in four phases: 

Only local traffic will be permitted in the work area for each phase.

Line painting for the project is scheduled during the week of Aug. 14. Work schedules are weather dependent.

The project is the culmination of a process that 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 the 650-bed Aspen Heights 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.

College Township had $80,000 designated for the project in the 2023 construction budget, as well as about $22,000 remaining from the $50,000 provided by Aspen Heights for traffic calming measures.