City to revisit traffic calming tonight
Tim Willert
After much debate and study and even more delay, the City Council
is scheduled to tackle Phase II of the city’s traffic-calming master
plan for the Mountain/Rossmoyne area tonight.
The council will consider removing seven temporary traffic
circles, installing 23 speed lumps, retaining 10 existing speed humps
and raising painted medians to slow traffic speeds in the area
bordered by Brand Boulevard, Mountain Street, Glendale Avenue and
Monterey Road.
“I am for protecting residential neighborhoods throughout this
city,” Councilman Frank Quintero said Friday. “There are numerous
neighborhoods that are impacted by cut-through traffic and parking.”
For eight years, traffic-calming proposals have been a bone of
contention among residents, including the Rossmoyne/Mountain
Homeowners Assn.
The association requested the raised medians and speed humps
during a May 8 meeting with traffic engineers and other city staff
members.
Association member Jim Weling, who lives in the 800 block of East
Mountain, supports the recommended plan.
“If the city would have ever done it correctly in the first place,
we wouldn’t have all this nonsense,” said Weling, who heads up
traffic and transportation for the Glendale Homeowners Coordinating
Council. “The major problem is you’ve got a group of people who no
matter what is proposed, they [dislike],” Weling added.
Speed lumps contain strategically placed gaps or openings and are
designed to reduce the speed of most vehicles, but not significantly
delay the response time of emergency vehicles such as ambulances,
fire trucks and fire engines.
City staffers and the Glendale Fire Department field tested the
lumps on May 30 on a seldom-used portion of Stancrest Drive, and the
results were positive, according to a staff report.
The item was set for council consideration June 18, but was
scratched from the agenda so traffic department staffers could
further research alternatives. It marked the latest in a long line of
delays that Quintero said has reached eight years.