Speed humps off the table - now what?
Thornhill Member
Thanks to all who took time to
submit feedback against the Board's plan to install speed humps on Elmstone
Drive at community expense.
We learned from CDOT this week speed
humps will not be approved due to strong opposition from the community,
especially owners along Elmstone.
We’re also pleased to report that CDOT remains committed to working with community members on an array of free traffic calming alternatives.
As a further update, this week we invited the Board President to attend a meeting
of our volunteer Traffic Calming committee.
We offered to continue our research and prepare a detailed traffic
calming plan based on your feedback, but the President declined. He announced instead his desire to keep
traffic calming under Board control, and his intention to hand select another
Board committee, with himself as Chair, to complete a traffic calming initiative
in the remaining 2 months of the Board term.
Our volunteer group debated this approach at length. We concluded that the high level of community interest on this topic argues for an independent committee, and a process open to as many member points of view as possible. Limits on community participation and another rush to action risk the same problems that plagued the Board’s ill-fated speed hump proposal: lack of research, misrepresentation of facts, and advocacy for actions outside the Board authority.
To send a message about participation, we encourage all of you to email
the President at pvar...@carolina.rr.com,
and attend the Board’s meeting on Monday, July 27 (7pm, pavilion) to express your concerns.
If, as announced, the Board limits participation in the community’s governance,
we offer our volunteer committee, which
is open to all, as a friendly alternative..
We plan to continue our research and meet with CDOT to understand all of
the alternatives available to Thornhill, including stop signs and crosswalks. Our
guiding principles are that the solutions proposed must -
1) be based on feedback from the entire community
2) be authorized by the membership through a write-in vote (no proxies)
3) be targeted to each specific portion of
Elmstone
4) include increased police enforcement,
community education, and landscape maintenance (to
increase sight lines for drivers and pedestrians)
6) feature evaluation at each implementation to gauge success.
If you'd like to be involved, please email us at Thornhill...@yahoo.com. We will of course be happy to share the information we collect in an Advisory Committee capacity if the Board pursues its own plan.
Thanks
Charla and Fred Fisher, Terry Losardo, Lee Griffin, Scott Black, Alfred Gallimore, Mina Nematollahi, Larry Starnes, Kelly Giarratana, Paul Metheney et al