Residents tell officials speeding becoming dangerous on West Locust Lane

EAST MARLBOROUGH >> West Locust Lane winds its treelined way through a quietly lovely suburban neighborhood, and it’s scaring the people there to death.

About 15 residents of the area packed the East Marlborough Township meeting room at a recent board of supervisors meeting to warn about what they call increasingly dangerous speeding along the road.

One of them, Ruth E. Kranz-Carl, spoke up first to tell the supervisors that very few if any non-residents who use it as a way to get from Mill Road to Route 82 observe the posted 25 mph speed limit. People go 60, she said, and even faster.

Kranz-Carl said she’s spoken to Township Manager Laurie Prysock about it, and the residents have gotten some temporary relief thanks to speed traps and radar signs set up by the township police. The time has come to consider more permanent measures, she said.

Lori Lattanzio-Townsend said with the amount of construction in the area, the road is increasingly traveled. “It’s only going to get worse,” she said.

Both the residents and the supervisors noted the new residential construction with more to come where Mill Road enters the borough. Anyone there heading for Route 1 or 926 will be tempted to cut through on Locust Lane, they said.

Even the noise of the speeding traffic is “horrific,” said Michael Smith. He said measures that would help included continuing the speed traps, putting in three-way stop signs at the intersections with Beverly Drive and Fairthorne Drive, banning commercial through traffic, and speed bumps.

“It’s cost-effective; it really works,” Smith said of the speed bumps, which would reduce the need for police time spent in the

area. “It would give our street a bad reputation as a speedway.”

Richard Hannum, the chairman of the supervisors, asked John Sarro, the vice chairman and head of the safety committee, to meet with representatives of the residents on the street to discuss the issues. Supervisor Julia Lacy also volunteered to be part of the group.

Sarro said he would have the chief of police measure the number and speed of vehicles traveling the road to get an initial reading on the scope of the problem.

In other business, the supervisors reviewed a preliminary draft budget of $2.8 million. Prysock said the balanced budget would include no tax increases. Major projects for the year would include demolishing unused buildings at the township park entrance, a new roof for the township building, and repairs to a number of curbs and bridges. Grants would fund portions of that work, Prysock said.

The supervisors discussed various aspects of the budget, which will be adopted in its final form in December.

The planned demolition at the entrance to the park makes possible some changes to the traffic flow there, and Cuyler Walker, the chairman of the planning commission, reviewed some of the proposed improvements with the supervisors.

The supervisors approved some cosmetic changes to the Longwood Village Shopping Center. Kevin Lahn, of the shopping center management, said some of the tenants felt the current green roof was a somewhat outmoded color and wanted to change to black or gray. After some discussion, the supervisors approved the change.

However, the supervisors told Lahn the full-length windows shown in some of his design sketches were not favored by the township’s design guidelines. They said they preferred there be at least an 18-inch strip of brick facade from the ground up. Lahn said he would speak to the tenants about that.