Village Drafting Ordinance to Mitigate Safety Concerns on North Irving Street

With the towering lights of Stevens Field lurking in the backgroound, residents on North Irving Street want the council to step in and do something about the traffic  before the problem becomes unmanagable.

Resident Paul Woodburn of 66 N. Irving told the village council Wednesday night that he and his neighbors want the council to eliminate parking on both sides of the street for safety concerns. Woodurn said children crossing the north side toward the field are in danger of being struck by cars, given the volume of traffic at certain times and the rate of speed some travel–far higher than the 25 mph specified.

Woodburn noted that a high school student suffered serious injuries in December by a 20-year-old while crossing the street on North Irving.

"Somebody's going to fly down that road at 7 p.m. and get hurt," Woodburn said. He added things will only be worse as the spring sports season comes and the neighbor-opposed lights are turned on at the sports field.

But Mayor Keith Killion, the head of the Safety Committee and former Captain of Detectives, said that a no-parking ordinance on N. Irving won't necessarily quell the problem. "No stopping, no standing is what you want," the mayor told him. Even if there is "No Parking," parents of high schoolers could still discharge passengers fully legally, which is the main safety issue, Killion said.

Still, Killion said, "We have to balance residents needs and the fact that parents have to drop kids off." Residents in the neighborhood filed a petition with the village and Woodburn says over 75 percent of neighborhood residents have signed the petition asking for a revision to the parking ordinance.

Parking is currently allowed on one side of the street and the village is hoping less drastic measures than painting the curb or reorienting drop-off points to the other side of the field can be made.

Village Engineer Chris Rutishauser has been working on a plan to allow some flexibility–a two-part ordinance that would restrict parking on the north-bound side of N. Irving but allow for discharging of passengers; the southern section (where the houses are) of the road would eliminate stopping and standing entirely.

"What we've been trying to do in the village is [to] try to change attitudes. Once they realize they can't do that [park illegally] then their traffic patterns change," Killion said. "How we could accomplish that could be as simple as a warning from a police officer."

Killion has no illusion that this will not be solved over night. "There's no easy answer to this," the mayor conceded. "We may need to have enforcement for a while until parents and people understand they'll just have to go the longer way."

Rutishauser said if the council is in agreement, the village should work with sports groups to implement the changes and instructions sooner than later, thus reducing the burden of enforcement and awareness on police officers.

In response to Deputy Mayor Tom Riche's questions of signage, Rutishauser said there are signs indicating that buses are to discharge passengers and park at the Graydon South lot.

However, the engineer said the village needs to be careful in how much signage it constructs. "Excess signage sometimes gets the mind to ignore it so we need to be careful how much to put up," he said.

Village Manager Ken Gabbert is preparing an ordinance to be voted at the next public meeting.