With Chestnut project done, 2 of the 3 Vondelpark stop signs to be removed
In keeping with city policy, flags were used to
alert motorists to the then-new four-way stop on Vondelpark Drive at Amstel
Drive in late 2015. Now that the Chestnut Street bridge project is finished, the
Vondelpark stop signs at Amstel and at Valkenburg are to be removed.
Westside Pioneer file photo
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A side effect was neighborhood complaints about speeders, and in October 2015 the city installed three new stop signs along the half-mile-plus connector between Chestnut and Centennial Boulevard.
Now, with the bridge in place since mid-November 2016, the Vondelpark stop signs at two of the three intersections will be removed, according to Colorado Springs Transportation Manager Kathleen Krager.
The locations are at Amstel and at Valkenburg drives. City crews are likely to take them out by late January or early February, according to Mark Nordstrom, a traffic technician with Traffic Engineering.
Monitoring by Krager's office showed that under normal conditions Vondelpark doesn't get enough traffic to justify stop signs.
At the January 2016 neighborhood meeting to
discuss Holland Park traffic affected by the Chestnut Street bridge project (which
is now completed), Colorado Springs Transportation Manager Kathleen Krager
talks with attendees.
Westside Pioneer file photo
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That phenomenon “is typical of all-way stop signs when they are not warranted by traffic volumes,” Krager said. As such, “we will remove them now that Chestnut is complete.”
The third 2015 Vondelpark four-way stop, at Holland Park Boulevard, must be kept because it's a school crossing, Nordstrom said.
There was a fourth set of stop signs added in the Holland Park neighborhood in 2015. This was on Holland Park Boulevard at Forrest Hill Road. As that intersection too has become a school crossing, its stop signs will also remain, Nordstrom said.
Based on comments at a January 2016 public meeting for the Holland Park neighborhood, not all residents liked the installation of stop signs at the three Vondelpark intersections. A resident who had asked the city to put them in reported receiving mixed feedback. Asked at the meeting if the signs were permanent, Krager said she saw them as “bandaids” that would be monitored during and after the Chestnut project.
However, she pointed out in a recent e-mail to the Westside Pioneer, if any citizens “feel they have an ongoing cut-through problem after the signs are removed, we can check the traffic volumes to see if that is the case.”
Westside Pioneer article
(Posted 1/23/17;
Transportation:
Major Roads)
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