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06/19/2018 12:00 AMWith the school year nearly at a close, the steady stream of cars trying to get to the three schools on or around Green Hill Road is likely to lessen. However, two Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) recently came before the Board of Police Commissioners to express concern over the traffic situation and propose a possible solution.
DHHS seniors Roisin Beirne and Emily Baker came before the board on June 14. Beirne said in their civics class, the students had been encouraged to look at issues in the area and Beirne said she and Baker focused on the intersection of Green Hill Road and Copse Road.
Beirne said that intersection gets very backed up during the morning commute and she would like to see the installation of a four-way traffic signal. She said the signal would operate for a set period of time during the morning and then would flash yellow for Green Hill Road and red for Copse Road during the remainder of the day.
“We feel like this would alleviate the traffic and cause less fender-benders and less overall congestion because that is a real problem with high school students who are just learning to drive so we are looking for your input,” said Baker.
Commission Chair Ed Dowling thanked Baker and Beirne for their input and proposal and said Green Hill Road has been a longstanding concern. Town Engineer John Iennaco said the town has looked at trying to put something at that intersection but the intersection wasn’t considered bad enough to merit a traffic signal.
“When the intersection was reviewed, they look at things like traffic volumes, peak hour traffic volumes, crash data, the types of crashes, so that being said, it didn’t meet warrants for those types of modifications to the intersection,” he said. “But this has been a concern that I’ve heard from residents in town, so I think it warrants taking another look at it. Maybe there are some solutions there to make some improvements.”
Dowling said a speed sign was placed on Green Hill Road recently and seems to have helped some, but agreed that there is still a problem with that intersection.
“Somebody is going to say, ‘I can just sneak through and that other car is absolutely going to stop’ and the next thing we hear is sirens,” he said. “So it’s something that we should take a serious look at.”
Dowling said the intersection will be placed in a specific traffic log, meaning the commission will keep an eye on the number of accidents and incidents in that particular intersection going forward. Commissioner Thomas Cartledge said this log ensures the commissioners monitor and take some sort of action on this problem.
“We will start the process again,” he said. “There could be line-of-sight issues that hadn’t existed before when the road was changed, there could be a higher volume of young people driving to school, there could be a change in neighborhood stats so more people working in different areas, but we will look at it and we will get you an answer and we can only ask for your patience.”
Drumm said the intersection is an issue and suggested that doing more studies might not add much more to the conversation.
“I heard again tonight about Corpse and Green Hill Road. Do you know how many studies have been done on that road since I have been here?” he said. “Four. We have talked about sight lines, that device they use with the ball roll as far as speeds, the hills coming down, people being able to see, and we know the traffic during the school year slows down…We put that speed sign there, which assisted greatly in slowing people down, but of course the summer time is a different animal. As I have sat here for years now I have seen things come up, come up, come up, and we try to move things along and it doesn’t happen.”