Village Board Stops Addition of New Stop Signs For Now

On Monday night, La Grange trustees voted against an ordinance that would have placed four stop signs along Maple Avenue between Brainard Avenue and Gilbert Avenue in a vote that split the board 3-4.

Village Board members hoped to approve the ordinance at the meeting, but could not agree on where the stop signs would be placed. Trustee Mark Kuchler also disagreed with village staff recommendations over whether to keep or remove stops sign in the area that would turn two intersections into four-way stops.

Despite the setback, board members seemed anxious to move forward and asked for another review of the area by the Department of Public Works. Trustees will likely vote again on a new ordinance at their next meeting on Nov. 14.

Letter to Staff Spurs Discussion

The discussion of the stop signs at the meeting was spurred by a letter from a resident requesting that staff consider placing stop signs along Maple Avenue at intersections with Leitch, Edgewood or Sunset avenues to create a four-way stop.

Public Works Director Ryan Gillingham told trustees at the meeting that after a review of the stop signs in the area, several segments of both Goodman and Maple avenues did not have any stop signs in the east-west direction. However, when looking at standards for the creation of a four-way stop in the Manuel on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD), village staff found that creating a four-way stop at those intersections did the standards from the Federal Highway Administration.

Kuchler: La Grange Needs Stop Sign Policy

Trustee Kuchler began the board's discussion by saying he had a few concerns with the ordinance as he lamented the village's lack of a uniform stop sign policy.

"I think that we need to have a village stop sign policy to give a reason for why a stop sign deserves to be at one place over another," Kuchler said, adding that the board passed on spending money for a traffic engineering study earlier this year that would have set standards.

Gillingham replied that the village did have a stop sign policy in that staff follows the recommendations set in the MUTCD. Additionally, La Grange relies on the village's past practice of placing stop signs in an alternating pattern between north-south streets and east-west streets.

Kuchler said another concern was the creation of the four-way stops at two intersections, which did not meet federal standards. Gillingham replied that in this particular case, staff was recommending the creation of a four-way stop for the short term for safety reasons, as removing the current north-south stop signs might pose a traffic risk for drivers who have long expected the signs to be there.

"We want to have alternating streets," Gillingham said. "We don't want drivers to become desensitized to stop signs by having too many."

The creation of four-way stops can have the unintended consequence of drivers rolling through the stops, Gillingham agreed, but said that his department believed that keeping the north-south signs there for the time being would be a safer alternative.

"I think there's no better time to change it than when you're adding stop signs," Kuchler said.

What Do Residents Think?

Two La Grange residents spoke at the meeting as well. The first, said he felt there were already too many stop signs in the area and the village should not be adding more. La Grange resident Philip Stamatakos disagreed.

"As someone who lives in the center of all this... I see many drivers who are careless and speedy," Stamatakos said. He added that due to the proximity to , many of the drivers in the area are young and inexperienced. Stamatakos requested the village consider adding the stop sign at Blackstone Avenue instead of Sunset Avenue, due to many children living on the block and that high school drivers use the street after they exit the LTHS parking lot.

Board Divided on Vote

Trustees went back and forth with village staff over where exactly stop signs could be placed, but continued to run into problems. Each proposed placement ran into new problems that would violate the Village's policy regarding the alternating stop sign pattern.

In the end, Village President Elizabeth Asperger asked that village staff perform another review of the area to see if any of the issues could be worked out.

The board voted 3-4 against the ordinance, but signaled that it wanted to address the issue quickly and asked for the second review, and any new recommendations, be completed before the next board meeting so that a new ordinance could be voted on.