The Fayston Select Board received complaints from a German Flats resident about speeding on that road and told her that the town currently has no traffic control plan to address speeding on the town’s roads.
Board members, during a July 25 meeting, listened to Amy Kennedy’s concerns and suggested that she consider homemade signs, like those that residents of North Fayston Road installed several years ago after asking the select board for help with speeding on that road.
Kennedy told the board she had been a part-time resident and after moving here full time was appalled by how fast people are driving past her house.
While Fayston has an ordinance addressing speed limits on its roads that was adopted in 1999 that established a speed limit of 35 mph on sections of all of its dirt roads, that ordinance includes no provision for law enforcement or traffic. The ordinance notes that the speed limit signs will be posted in accordance with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices which specify specific intervals for speed limit signs as well as required distances from intersections.
The ordinance also addresses some paved roads with speed limits that vary from 25 mph to 40 mph.
At the July 25 meeting board members told Kennedy that the select board had included funding for speed enforcement in the town budget in 2009. That budget passed at Town Meeting in March 2009 and voters petitioned for that line item to be removed, calling for a special meeting where that happened. Warren and Waitsfield have annual contracts with the Washington County Sheriff’s office for traffic control.
The board has not included funds for law enforcement in its town budget since then although board member Chuck Martel, interviewed this week about the issue said that the board may consider revisiting the idea of traffic control in Fayston.
He said that the board discussed the issue after the July 25 meeting and may have the Vermont State Police come talk to them about options.
Martel said that the board may consider bringing it up again to take the temperature of the town to see how voters feel about contracting for traffic control.
“When people come to us with concerns and we tell people there’s nothing we can do, that doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s time to bring this for another vote at Town Meeting,” Martel said.
Concurrent with discussions about speed limits, speeding and traffic control, the board is also working on replacing worn-out, damaged or stolen signs on some town roads where signs currently exist. Some roads, such as Tucker Hill Road that have never had any speed limit signs, have had signs show up in the last month. Those signs, which cost $250 plus town road crew time to install, according to board chair Jared Cadwell, are not located at the bottom of the road to alert people to the speed limit. The first sign uphill drivers see on that road is located a mile up the road. The first sign that downhill drivers see is located ½ mile up the road (two-tenths of a mile away from the first uphill sign). The second sign that downhill drivers see is located four-tenths of a mile up the hill. Cadwell said those signs need to be moved.
Martel and board member Mike Jordan said the Tucker Hill Road signs were in response to complaints about people speeding on that road. Jordan said there were concerns about speeding on Tucker Hill Road related to a winter incident on the first steep pitch of that road when a tow truck had a tow cable stretched across the travel lane and another car hit that cable.
“I’m not sure why those speed limit signs were placed where they were on Tucker Hill, Jordan said.
Asked why the town is spending money on improperly placed signs that are not enforceable, Martel said it was “in hopes that people see the signs and slow down.”
Both board members said that there’s no overall town plan or process for installing new speed limit signs on town roads, other than the work to replace pre-existing damaged or stolen signs.
Jordan said that the town taking a look at its speed signs was an outgrowth of the town replacing its wooden town road signs with state-mandates green and white signs.
“We asked the road foreman to take an inventory of the condition of the signs on the roads and started updating those that had faded or been damaged and over the past two years we’ve been replacing those,” he said.
He said that the town had also received word from VTrans that the state would be replacing the speed limit and curving warning signs on German Flats Road through the state’s Curves program.
