Proposed Traffic Circle at Riverside & New Kent on WHNA Agenda
This Thursday, June 9th at the Westover Hills Methodist Church is the regularly scheduled Westover Hills Neighborhood Association meeting. One of the items to be discussed is a proposed traffic circle at Riverside & New Kent. The circle is the solution designed by city engineers to address traffic speed and safety concerns. The circle would be larger than the most recent one implemented at New Kent and Prince Arthur. All information for this post including the photo came from the WHNA website.
So what came of this meeting? And who is proposing these? The city, VDOT, someone in our neighborhood?
Seems that it will cause more havoc that not, especially in the warm weather months. The public parks on the city streets to access the path that is part of the park system. If they line New Kent, as they do now, won’t that congest the area?
Idea, figure out a way to catch all the folks, many our nieghbors, who run the stop signs in this hood. That should generate enough income to build these silly things. Or maybe even enough to give our public servants a raise. They haven’t had one in a few years….Reckless driving can be quite the fine!
The neighbors at the meeting voted to endorse the residential traffic circle at this intersection. All of the efforts to get these have been at the requests of the residents of those areas, not initiated by the association, VDOT or the city, but by the residents.
The edge of the circle will be 18 feet from the edge of the pavement still allowing for cars to park and there be a travel isle.
I don’t get it. Does the city have a surplus of money to spend these days? There is plenty to be taken care of around the city. Maybe they could consider lowering the ridiculous meals tax and stop spending money on these traffic circles. The one that was put in recently seems to serve no purpose. The neighbor adjacent to that circle said that they think it is silly but it looks nice. What does it cost the tax payer?
When the Forest Hill neighborhood asked the city traffic engineers for help with cut through traffic on our residential streets in the late 90′s, they tried to talk us into one of those circles. At that time they said it would cost about $10,000 without any fancy landscaping, so who knows how much it would be now. It seemed like something silly and expensive that wouldn’t work. Instead we opted for stop signs at multiple locations. Those supposedly cost about $150 per intersection, and they’ve worked great. I have to think that some of the federal funds the city receives are somehow earmarked for these things…but federal money is our money too. I question the upkeep costs of these from now on also. Maybe those requesting them would want to “adopt a circle”.