Broadway residents meet with city officials to air safety concerns

Residents living on Broadway Thursday voiced their opinions on what the city should do to improve the safety of that city street.

About 25 neighbors of the street assembled inside the First Church of the Nazarene in what resembled a townhall-style meeting where they expressed opinions to city staff and three attending city commissioners.

Not only did residents sound off about the problems, they filled out surveys that asked them to rank on a scale from one to eight a list of options officials intend to use to formulate a plan for improving the road's safety.

The options include installation of stop signs on all four corners of Third and Broadway and of Sixth and Broadway, installation of speed bumps on Broadway at various locations, allowing parking on one side of Broadway, disallowing parking on either side of the street, lowering the speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour, widening Broadway and installing new curbing, guttering and sidewalks, prohibiting truck traffic. A blank space was also provided on the survey form to allow each respondent the opportunity to suggest any other option they believe might provide the best solution to the problem.

"The decision falls on us on what to do," Commissioner John Keating to the audience, "but we need input from the neighborhood."

City Manager Richard Nienstedt said the options were pulled from e-mails he received from residents and proposals from city staff. In the following weeks, staff will collect the survey information and formulate a plan to present options to city commissioners for consideration.

The street's safety has been repeatedly questioned by city residents.

The danger of the road, primarily centered around a lack of stop signs, its too-smooth surface and narrow configuration, has been a long-time problem for residents, who say motorists tend to drive their vehicles down the street at excessive speeds.

Local resident Lana Beerbower spent most of her life living on Broadway, and she knows the dangers it presents. She was nearly hit by a vehicle driving on the street when she was 5 years old. At Thursday's meeting, she told officials she opposes installing a four-way stop at Third and Broadway, saying it would prevent parking on the side of the street, which some residents point to as a safety problem.

Beerbower ranked lowering the speed limit to 25 miles per hour as the most important option to increase its safety.

Public Works recently conducted a traffic count and found 2,412 vehicles traveling north and south on Broadway between Sixth and Wall streets within a 24 hour period. But the count didn't measure what times experienced the heaviest traffic.

Beerbower's mother, who still lives along the 200 block of Broadway, on Sept. 29 counted 78 vehicles pass by between 10 and 10:30 a.m. and 59 vehicles zip by from 9 to 9:30 a.m.

He said an immediate improvement, which will probably happen, is painting a yellow double-strip line down the center of the road.

Gene Collier, 418 S. Broadway, along with other residents, said backing out of their driveways is dangerous and difficult on the busy street. He also said there is only one speed limit sign on the entire street.

Commissioner Hedges recommended multiple options be temporarily tested to determine efficiency and popularity, a point well received by the audience.

Numerous residents said there is little to zero police patrol of Broadway, a missed opportunity for police to pull over drivers they witness regularly zooming down the street, residents said.

Officers will be increasing patrol of Broadway in the future, both by running radar and patrolling the area, Director of Public Safety Jeff Davis said. So far this year, officers have initiated eight traffic stops on Broadway, resulting in 13 citations, Davis told the audience. There have also been six accidents on the street this year. Davis said officers concentrate on patrolling the school zones each weekday.

Davis said combining proposed options along with increased patrol would more effectively increase the safety of the area.

Beerbower said if police concentrated on patrolling the street in a single day, they could meet those numbers.

At the end of the meeting, which Nienstedt said was productive, he read off a list of areas of concern he jotted down on his legal pad during the meeting. It included: increased traffic enforcement, four-way stop signs and speed limit signs, and install a school zone.