Advertisement The city’s Board of Public Works is planning a public information session to get feedback about building a roundabout instead of installing traffic signals at the intersection of Sand Lake Road and Riders Club Road as soon as 2010.
According to a traffic study conducted by Strand Associates, the city’s consultants, traffic on Riders Club Road is projected to grow 250 percent to 17,680 vehicles per day by 2030. Sand Lake Road traffic is projected to increase from today’s 20,800 a day to 52,990 by 2030.
Current intersection design will fail to move traffic efficiently resulting in more traffic, accidents, injuries and even fatalities by that time, the consultants reported at Tuesday’s Board of Public Works meeting.
A two-lane roundabout would cost $871,000 and a signalized intersection would cost $863,000. The costs exclude right-of-way purchase.
In 2007, a National Cooperative Highway Research Program study of 55 intersections in 14 states showed roundabouts reduced crashes by 35 percent and fatal and incapacitating injuries by 76 percent.
A signalized intersection would result in delays and long lines of traffic at left-turn lanes. Also, the consultants said, in a conventional intersection there are 32 points where conflict between vehicles and pedestrians arise. With a roundabout, there are only eight points of conflict.
The geometry of a roundabout slows traffic and simplifies driving tasks. Pedestrian crossings are shorter. Roundabouts accommodate cyclists, reduce fuel consumption, improve air quality due to reduced vehicle idling and improve traffic operations.
Roundabouts are much more common in Europe than in the United States. Only 1,200 roundabouts exist in 23 states. There are about 80 in Wisconsin. By comparison, France has 20,000, the United Kingdom has 10,000 and Australia has 5,000.
Residents should look for notices announcing the public information session in the near future. A date for the session was not set by Courier Life press time, but according to city staff, it will probably be held late June or very early July.
Water woes
Some residents along Tahoe Drive in the Aspen Valley subdivision will be receiving a different kind of notice. The city will send notices to homeowners encroaching on a drainage easement. Residents on Aspen Valley Drive complained the city was not enforcing easement rules, resulting in inadequate stormwater drainage and water being pushed onto their lots.
Martha Koloski, a homeowner on Aspen Valley Drive, represented a number of residents at the board, showing board members pictures of standing water in their yards, caused, they say, by violations of easement rules and the city’s inconsistent enforcement of those rules.
Koloski said she had complained to the city in the past and was told she could build up her yard by six inches. That, she said, would cost $9,000, not including pulling up all the existing landscaping.
A 50-foot easement exists in the yards between the two rows of homes, Aspen Valley drive on the west side and Tahoe Drive on the east. Each row of homes has easements requiring their land be flat for 25-feet from the center in order for drainage flow between culverts. The easement prohibits property owners from placing anything permanent on the 25-foot.
The homes on the west side, along Aspen Valley Drive, were built and landscaped leaving the land flat as required by the easements. The homes along Tahoe Drive were built and then landscaped with dirt creating slopes on the 25-foot easement. The result is water is pushed significantly over the easement’s west side onto the properties there.
“Everyone on the west side has complied with the easement,” Koloski said. “This rule has only been applied by the city unilaterally to the west side homeowners. We are asking the city to enforce the easement on both sides.”
According to Jarrod Holter, city engineer, all the homes passed city building inspection. But landscaping occurs after inspections. He acknowledged most of the built-up yards were encroaching on the easement, some by as much as 12 feet into it.
Holter said even if the encroachments were rectified, water will still be a problem because of the sloping of the drainage swale. Because of the sloped design of the swale, he said they have had a problem since day one and will continue to have problems.
“They are still going to get water through the yards. The playground is still going to get water on it. It won’t be as bad, but it will still get water.”
Stormwater costs
Dealing with yet more water issues, the board is scheduling a public meeting to discuss implementing a new stormwater utility and charging city residents for stormwater management costs. That meeting will occur July 1, but the time is not yet known.
Stimulus funds
No one spoke Tuesday at a public hearing on a $43,000 amendment to the city’s capital improvement budget. Because stimulus funds will save the city more than $500,000, the board reconsidered other projects that had been deleted due to financial constraints.
The board decided because of future economic uncertainty and budgetary constraints, the city will only spend $43,000 of the $500,000. The money will pay for reconstruction of Fern Street between Second and Third Avenues.
cmalayter wrote on Jun 10, 2009 12:35 PM: