Granite Street traffic request hits stop sign


Beth Gister’s quest to make her block safer produced a petition and a city policy but no satisfaction, and 11 months after she first made her request for a lower speed limit on Granite Street, she’s back where she started, needing to get her neighbors to sign a petition.

But it was a close thing: Mayor Clem Seifert had to cast a rare tie-breaking vote after the three councilmen at Monday night’s meeting (Lonnie Davis, John Wester and Mike Rainey) and the three councilwomen (Elissa Yount, Harriette Butler and Mary Emma Evans) split over how to handle Granite Street.

The mayor backed the men, who wanted to follow the city policy, reject the petition for a 25-mph speed limit based on the lack of supporting data, and give Gister the chance to collect her neighbors’ signatures on a new petition for a 3-inch-high speed hump. The women felt that Gister had waited long enough and jumped through enough hoops in the past year, and they wanted to approve a speed hump immediately.

“I think we have missed a lot of steps along the way. That’s why I voted no,” Yount said, noting that Gister made her request eight months before the council enacted the relevant policy and has regularly attended council meetings, waiting for an answer. “We should have just told her no back in last April.”

The Granite Street resident wants something done to slow traffic on her block between Chestnut and Garnett streets. She said drivers fly down the residential road to get through the stoplight to Raleigh Road, imperiling children and posing a particular problem for the special-needs school bus that serves her child.

Her situation led last April to a petition to lower the standard 35-mph speed limit in the city to 25 mph in the Old West End. That sparked a council debate over how to handle such special neighborhood requests for “traffic calming” measures and led to the approval of a policy in December.

Under the policy, requests for speed humps, lower speed limits or other traffic measures are referred to the council’s Public Safety Committee and city staff for study. As a test of the policy, City Engineer Frank Frazier led a study of Granite Street, Roanoke Avenue and Rockspring Street.

The resulting data did not result in any recommendations for the council to approve action.

In the case of Roanoke Avenue, Frazier said more than 40 percent of the cars are speeding, but he attributed that to the fact that the road has a 25-mph limit, while drivers in Henderson are used to 35 mph. That fit with Police Chief Glen Allen’s contention that lowering speed limits doesn’t slow down drivers; it just puts more of them over the legal limit.

“My guess is if we did a hundred streets, we’d find 80 to 90 percent are obeying the speed limit,” Frazier said.

Still, Frazier recommended that the council refer Roanoke Avenue back to the Public Safety Committee for the consideration of such measures as more speed-limit signs and rumble strips.

Frazier said the numbers from a 24-hour study of Granite Street and a study of Rockspring Street did not justify any action. The council accepted the staff recommendation of no action on Rockspring Street without debate; Granite Street was a far different matter.

The Granite Street study found that about 9 percent of drivers exceeded the 35-mph speed limit. Frazier said the average speed was about 26 mph, and the 85th percentile, a standard in measuring traffic, was less than 33 mph. Most of the speeders were between noon and 2 p.m. and between 4 and 6 p.m.

“Based on the data, it doesn’t appear that any traffic calming is needed,” Frazier said. He added that the Public Safety Committee felt that Granite Street would be a good testing place for speed humps or some other safety devices if the neighborhood petitions for such measures.

Seifert laid out the city policy, which allows the council to approve such traffic measures despite a lack of supporting data only if two-thirds of the affected residents sign a petition. He advised that the council accept the staff recommendation and advise Gister, who was in attendance, of the likelihood of a positive response if she submitted another petition.

“It probably would be a good idea to follow the policy,” Seifert said after Evans asked whether the council could go ahead and approve speed humps

Gister argued that the council said in December that Granite Street could be a test site for traffic measures, not just for data collection. She noted that Wester said then that it was clear Granite Street would never qualify under any quantitative standard set by city policy.

“I recommend that we get a petition first,” said Davis, who heads the Public Safety Committee.

Gister was furious at the need to produce another petition after she submitted one at the start of April 2004. Seifert and others said that petition didn’t count because it only asked for a lower speed limit; some people who supported that proposal might not like the addition of speed humps to their street.

Yount said the average speed of 26 mph indicated that most drivers believe that a 25-mph limit is proper for Granite Street. Frazier disagreed and pointed to the 85th-percentile figure of 32.67 mph.

“Because Miss Gister has done her own research, she should know the traffic conditions better than a 24-hour study,” Evans said.

But that’s not the city’s policy.

“Is it 9 percent of the residents have to be killed first?” Gister asked.

She showed increasing frustration at the bureaucratic hurdles.

“Let’s just keep dragging it out and dragging it out and dragging out when you have the ability to make a decision now,” Gister said. “I asked for a decision in December before you passed this policy.”

She demanded a formal, written rejection of her first petition. She soon got the formal rejection, on a motion from Davis that was seconded by Wester.

Seifert needed a show of hands to be sure of the count, then broke the tie in one of the few votes he has cast since moving up from council member to mayor in December 2003.

Gister stormed out of the room.