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Officials consider speed humps on Ridgeway Street
By Justin Goble
Sylva’s street committee discussed putting speed humps on Ridgeway Street during its Jan. 26 meeting.
The request for the devices came from residents of Ridgeway Street, who want the humps installed to cut down on speeding on the road. A petition with more than 20 names was presented to town Manager Jay Denton in an effort to get action from town officials.
Residents Kim Ensley and Carolyn Diamond were on hand to plead their case to committee members during the meeting. Both said the amount of speeding on the street has left them scared to do routine tasks.
“We live in fear up there,” Diamond said. “It bothers me to cross the street to check the mail with the rate of speed some cars are driving. There’s a lot of elderly people and children that live on that street.”
“The (speed limit and children at play) signs haven’t slowed anyone down as far as I can see,” Ensley said. “The reminders just aren’t paid attention to. People are going up the apartments or beyond really fast. We’re just scared.”
Denton said the problem needs attention because of the number of residents that live on Ridgeway.
“There’s a lot people who live on that road,” Denton said. “If there were only three houses on that road, it wouldn’t be as big of a problem.”
Committee member Maurice Moody said he would like to see humps installed since he has heard numerous complaints about speeding on Ridgeway during his tenure as a town board member.
“If there’s any way we can afford it, I would like to help these residents out,” Moody said. “Ridgeway has always had complaints about speeding. At least since I’ve been on the (town) board.”
Part of the problem was caused inadvertently when similar work was done on another street, Moody said.
“The people speeding on Ridgeway are the ones that used to take a short cut through Cowan Street,” Moody said. “That’s why we put speed bumps on Cowan, to stop the speeders on that street. We may have caused the problem on Ridgeway by fixing Cowan.”
At least four or five humps would need to be installed to effectively curb speeding on the road, Public Works Director Dan Schaeffer said. Since they are labor intensive, the cost of installing them may be more than what is available in this year’s budget.
“This project will cost between $4,800 and $5,000,” Schaeffer said. “It doesn’t fit into our budget. It’s something we’ll have to do in the next budget year.”
Though regular speed bumps would be less expensive to install, Schaeffer told the committee they would hinder emergency vehicles responding to a call.
“Ambulances can’t get over the bumps if they have to go fast,” Schaeffer said. “These humps allow them to go fast if they need to.”
Moody and committee member Ray Lewis both suggested that installing one or two of the devices at a time may allow some of the speeding to be curtailed while fitting part of the project into this year’s budget.
“We don’t have to go with four at a time,” Lewis said. “We can start with one or two, then add to it.”
“We may need to put in enough initially to solve the problem,” Moody said.
Schaeffer said doing the construction incrementally may cost the town more, since contractors charge “trip charges” to cover the cost of travel. The town would have to pay this charge each time contractors go to work on the street, he said.
Committee members agreed to let Denton and Schaeffer investigate the matter further before deciding when to start work.
The committee also discussed placing street lights on Asheville Highway between Sylva Plaza and Harris Regional Hospital.
Schaeffer said $42,486 had been set aside for the project in 2003. However, the two bids he recently received came in at $85,518 and $110,500.
Moody suggested light poles be installed during June and July, since that would allow officials to pull some funding from the current budget and some from next year’s budget.
“We have had requests from a number of businesses up there that would like street lights,” Moody said. “We want lights on all the major thoroughfares.”
Denton said such action would take money away from any other capital improvements the town would take up in the next fiscal year, but room could be made if the town board wanted the street lights to go up.
“If we pull it out of next year’s fund, we’ll be pulling from other projects,” Denton said. “But if the board wants, we can put it in next year’s budget.”
The idea of putting the lights on existing wooden power poles was suggested by Moody as a means to install the lights without spending a great deal of money.
Schaffer said while there aren’t enough wooden poles to put lights on, the town has some old poles that could possibly be used. This would save some money if the poles conform to Department of Transportation standards, he said.
“We have 22 old poles that we took down,” he said. “They’re breakaway poles. I don’t know if the engineering on the poles would meet DOT standards.”
The discussion of installing the lights on Asheville Highway brought up the issue of where poles were needed most in town. Moody said it is a priority to light major thoroughfares. Denton and Schaeffer argued that more street lights are needed along N.C. 107, where there is no light for pedestrian traffic.
“Jay and I have talked about this, and we feel that headlights light the roads,” Schaeffer said. “These (street lights) should be additional lighting for pedestrians.”
“We’d be lighting a street with no sidewalks while we have sidewalks with no lights,” Denton said. “We need to know if the board wants to keep (lighting the thoroughfares) a priority. There was poor planning somewhere.”
The committee decided to let Denton and Schaeffer research the issue and present more information before action is taken.
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