5.3. SR 09-05-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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City of Elk River REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Agenda Section Meeting Date Administration September 5, 2006 Item Description Consider Drafting Traffic Calming Policy Introduction Discussion during site plan reviews of late has brought up the thought of requiring developers of residential plats to include traffic calming designs in their plats, and at their costs. Staff feels that including engineered traffic calming on the front end, eliminates significant staff time later related to complaints about traffic issues/ speeding vehicles, and creates safer neighborhoods for our residents. Discussion One of the most frequent calls for police service or complaints to our engineering department is speeding cars or unsafe traffic flow through neighborhood developments. Historically, the ability of staff to respond to these complaints has been fairly limited. Two of the most common requested responses are usually not staff supported. The most common request has been for additional stop signs. Although this has some impact on slowing traffic, it creates additional safety concerns and often results in drivers speeding from stop sign to stop sign. The second request is often for speed bumps. Although speed bumps work, they create issues for street maintenance, specifically, they are very difficult to plow around in the winter. Our City Engineer, Terry Maurer has significant training in traffic calming techniques. Captain Rolfe from the Police Department will be traveling to the University of Wisconsin, Madison in September to attend two courses. The first, "Traffic Engineering Fundamentals", covers basic traffic engineering studies, traffic control warrants and standards, traffic control devices and materials and common traffic control problems and solutions. The second course, "Solving Neighborhood Traffic Problems", allows the student to learn from communities with active neighborhood traffic programs, view a wide range of traffic calming devices in the field and to experiment in solving common neighborhood traffic programs in a clinical setting. With both these staff persons current on traffic calming techniques, we will be well prepared to address current and future traffic issues that arise in our neighborhoods. More importantly, we believe that we should be proactive by no/adopting developments that based on size and road layout-will present traffic issues over time. C:\Documents and Settings\tallard\Local Settings\ Temporary Internet Files\OLKF\Doc4.doc