Street committee proposes stop signs, 25 mph zone on South Ninth

The Washington Street Committee met Wednesday to discuss how to control truck traffic on South Ninth Avenue. Committee member Bob Shepherd said the key is to make South Ninth appear more residential.

?The first order should be to make the speed limit 25 miles per hour,? Shepherd said. ?It will cut back on truck traffic if we enforce it.?

The speed limit on South Ninth is 30 mph.

Committee member Merlin Hagie said he drove 30 mph on South Ninth recently. He told the other committee members that 30 mph felt too fast when he came to the ?S curve? at Madison Street.

Hagie said the speed limit on South Ninth is different from most other residential streets because it is considered a ?connector? between major roads. City Engineer Rob McDonald agreed with Hagie that that was probably the reason the speed limit was different on South Ninth. He said there are residential streets in Muscatine with speed limits of 30 mph because they are arterials to main roads.

Committee member Karen Wilson-Johnson said, ?I?m shocked any residential street is 30 mph. There are a lot of kids in that neighborhood.?

Hagie said another method to control truck traffic on that road is by specifying weight limits.

?We want to stop the biggest trucks from driving on the street, such as those carrying bulldozers and things like that,? Hagie said.

McDonald said trucks have their Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) posted inside their door, which would allow the police to enforce a weight limit without having to weigh the trucks.

Shepherd said. ?What about the big wagons that go down South Ninth during harvest??

Hagie said, ?Farmers have more leeway than anyone else because of the nature of their occupation.?

?No one wants to make anyone?s job harder, but we?ve got to choose safety over convenience,? Wilson-Johnson said.

Shepherd also recommended making the intersection of South Ninth and Van Buren Street a four-way stop.

?That intersection gets a lot of foot traffic all year from both kids and adults,? he said.

The committee agreed to pass along Shepherd?s recommendation to the full council. At the council meeting that evening, the council passed a motion to draft an ordinance to make South Ninth a 25 mph zone and to install stop signs on South Ninth where it intersects Van Buren.

The committee also discussed whether and how to charge residents when the city repairs their sidewalk. McDonald suggested that the city pay half the cost of repair and to have the city bid out the project. Building and Zoning Official Steve Donnelly suggested the city should offer to pay a certain amount of money per square foot and have the homeowner pay the rest.

McDonald told the committee he could get the average bid price for sidewalks from the Iowa Department of Transportation. He estimated that the city could get concrete for about $20 a square yard for a 4-inch thick slab. The committee agreed to pay for half of the square footage of sidewalk repair, based on the DOT?s average price. Shepherd recommended that the city budget $10,000 for sidewalk repair for the rest of the year.

Donnelly informed the committee that there are a number of uncontrolled intersections in town. He said he was driving near one recently and was nearly hit by a speeding car coming from his left that did not yield to him. Wilson-Johnson said she was unaware there were uncontrolled intersections and said that the issue should be investigated further.