Township seeks to broaden residents’ role in traffic matters

Last policy review was 10 years ago

A proposed update to Upper St. Clair’s trafficcalming policy is designed to increase residents’ involvement in the process and more.

“We are looking at things [administrators] can do that are more common sense,” Adam Benigni, planning and community development director, said at the township board of commissioners meeting on Oct. 2.

Board members will present proposal recommendations to staff in the next few weeks, with discussion continuing at the commissioners meeting on Oct. 30.

“There is some finetuning to do,” township manager Serakowski said.

Currently, if a resident wants to improve safety within a neighborhood by reducing motorists’ speed, for example, the resident submits a written request to the township manager.

The request must include a petition signed by residents from at least 20 households in the neighborhood. The administration then requests an eligibility review by the township’s traffic engineer.

But there might be faster, simpler and more common-sense options, Mr. Benigni said. If drivers are routinely running a stop sign, for example, a solution might be to have trees trimmed to increase the visibility of the stop sign, he said.

After a plan is decided on, the township’s current policy requires that at least 50 percent of the neighborhood households approve of the plan before it may be recommended by the administration to the board of commissioners.

Another proposed change to the 2007 policy would increase that requirement to at least 60 percent.

“This is a more thoughtful process,” board President Mark Christie said.

The commissioners’ approval is required for any traffic-calming project.

Four to five requests for a traffic-calming plan are submittedMatt by residents each year. The most recent one to receive the go-ahead was a project to reduce speeding on Huntington Drive. It included installing two speed humps plus speed hump warning signs and a stop sign on Weston Drive approaching Huntington along with signs warning of the stop sign ahead.

During discussion of the issue early this year, the board was made aware that the township’s traffic-calming policy had not been reviewed for the past 10 years, which sparked the current review.