Calming devices in Loganville shelved for the moment

By Jim Thompson – The Walton Tribune

In other business at the Monday work session, the full council followed Councilwoman Melanie Long’s lead and agreed informally to delay any detailed consideration of installing traffic-calming measures on city streets until after the first of next year.

At their September meeting, in an effort led largely by Long, the council directed city government staff to gather data on what other area communities have been and are doing to slow traffic on city streets where such measures are warranted.

Long, a resident of Covington Street, has been particularly concerned about traffic on that two-lane route, which serves as a cut-through between Lawrenceville Road and Main Street. Long has advocated reducing the speed limit on the street.

Assistant City Manager Jeff Smith presented the council with the results of the staff data-gathering effort, which outlined recent traffic-calming efforts in the cities of Monroe, Lawrenceville, Decatur and Sugar Hill and Tucker as potential inspiration for local discussion of traffic-calming initiatives.

Initiatives tracked down by Loganville city staff ranged from a $28,206 project in Sugar Hill that placed a raised crosswalk on a city street to calm traffic to a project in the city of Lawrenceville that attracted a $1.67-million bid for construction of two raised tabletop intersections to calm traffic in the city’s square.

Raised tabletop intersections comprise a flat elevated area covering the entire intersection, placed even with surrounding sidewalks and with ramps on all approaches. The design slows down vehicles, increasing pedestrian safety, and because the road surface is flush with approaching sidewalks, makes the transition from sidewalk to road a seamless one, with no step up or down.

Another initiative presented to the council included a nearly $960,000 project in nearby Monroe that resulted in the installation of speed humps on North Highland and South Madison avenues and Davis Street, chicanes on East Church Street and street narrowing and on-street parking on North Midland Avenue.

Other initiatives mentioned in Smith’s report to the council were a $1.3-million initiative in Tucker that included installation of center medians, chicanes, striping and signage on Brocket Road, and a $165,000 traffic-calming study undertaken in Decatur.

Smith’s report also included the results of staff interaction with an engineering firm that produced a rough estimate for design and construction costs for speed tables on Covington Street. According to that analysis, engineering costs would be in the range of $120,000, with construction costs pegged at $15,000 per speed table.