CROTHERSVILLE
After giving a four-way stop proposal some more thought, some members of the Crothersville Town Council expressed reservations.
During a June meeting, Councilman Jason Hillenburg proposed changing the intersection of Main and Kovener streets from a two-way stop to a four-way stop with the hope of slowing traffic down in the area. He lives near the intersection.
Heavily traveled Main Street often has semitrailer traffic going to and from local industries, and Hillenburg said not all motorists adhere to the 30 mph speed limit between the stop signs at the S-curve and the four-way stop at Bethany Road. The Main and Kovener intersection is between those two stops.
When the first reading of the ordinance was introduced during the July 7 meeting, Councilwoman Katie Masters said she changed her thoughts on the four-way stop.
“I know whenever we first talked about this, I did agree on it. But are we sure this is really what we need to fix the issue because part of me feels like it’s just going to make it a bigger issue and not be as safe because that is a high-traffic area with the semis,” she said. “Especially during this time, I don’t think it’s the best way to go about it.”
Council President Danieta Foster said her fear is the backup of semis on Main Street.
“The other day, I was over there and there were like five, six trucks coming through at the same time having to stop at the S-curve and then Bethany Road,” she said. “Then they would have had to do another stop at Kovener (if the intersection changed to a four-way stop), and that’s just going to keep backing up.”
Councilman Jamy Greathouse said he and some other council members had discussed the proposal with the Crothersville Police Department.
The consensus was that the four-way stop isn’t the answer to the issue, he said.
“I agree that with the amount of traffic that’s going through there and the neighborhood it’s in that there is something we need to look at, but I don’t believe that this ordinance is going to be the answer to that situation,” he said.
Greathouse said one issue on that stretch of the street is lack of signage, such as speed limit signs or Children at Play signs. Installing those types of signs could slow people down, he said.
When the street recently was measured, he said it was determined that two semitrailers would be able to sit at the proposed four-way stop but a third would be blocking the Bethany Road intersection.
“There wouldn’t be enough for all of them to be able to continually flow through that area,” Greathouse said. “Ultimately, the best solution would be to not have semis coming through the town neighborhoods like that, but currently, that’s not the option or situation we have.”
Council Vice President Chad Wilson said a five-year plan once included widening Kovener Street from the industrial park going north, but that’s still not feasible at this time.
“Right now, there’s no other road that they can take,” he said of semitrailers.
Town attorney Jeff Lorenzo suggested tabling the ordinance, giving it some additional thought, revisiting it in the future and amending it if necessary.
The council voted 4-0 to table it until the Aug. 4 meeting. Hillenburg abstained from the vote.