Free Oak Avenue
(from speeders)
There are a lot of times in local government when a group of citizens gets up before a board of elected officials and says, “If you had to approve this today, you wouldn’t.â€
So, Oak Avenue residents were right to remind the board of aldermen Tuesday that they wouldn’t allow a developer to build a 21-foot wide road (17 feet, not counting the curbs and gutters) with no sidewalks if the traffic count was upwards of 1,000 trips a day.
But that’s what’s going on, and even though a speed table is working to reduce some speeding, there are still plenty of folks racing down Oak every day. Plain and simple, it’s a cut through to a growing downtown, and until that changes the speeding won’t stop. So the residents and the town are back to square one, which includes revisiting the idea of making part of Oak one-way. The impact of that will have to be carefully studied.
Meanwhile, one traffic-calming measure — greater police presence — has yet to be put in place. And while we’re not sure where exactly Carrboro Police can set up a speed trap on the road, we’re pretty sure that given the speeds seen and measured, they’ll be writing plenty of tickets.