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Brookhaven officials considering many ways to slow down motorists BY DYANA BAGBY dyanabagby@reporternewpapers.net
Brookhaven’s Public Works Director Richard Meehan pulled up a map of the city on his desktop computer and pointed to the hundreds of yellow dots. “Those are all the speed bumps in the city,” he said. There are more than 200 speed bumps within the approximate 11 square miles of the city, he said. But residents want more of them—and several other types of traffic calming devices the city is ex-
amining amid complaints of cut-through commuter traffic. From “splinter islands” to roundabouts, Meehan’s job is to weigh the possibilities. “There’s just so much an engineer can do to slow down some idiots,” Meehan said. “We just ask everyone to be patient.” A quick glance of the map shows that more than half of Brookhaven’s speed bumps are positioned between Peachtree Road and Buford Highway. A lot of the speed bumps were “inherited” from DeKalb County probably a de-
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cade before Brookhaven became a city, Meehan said. The reason for so many speed bumps is to slow and attempt to deter the hundreds of cut-through commuters trying to avoid the congested Dresden Drive and North Druid Hills Road area that serve as de facto thoroughfares to I-85 and I-285. “A lot of the issues we have are shortcuts through the neighborhoods. People are going to drive where they are going to drive,” Meehan said. On Aug. 9, the City Council is set to
vote on a controversial traffic calming petition in Brookhaven Heights that calls for more speed bumps in the neighborhood, but also the partial closure of Standard Drive and Thornwell Drive by making them right-in only from North Druid Hills Road, and also partially closing Oglethorpe Avenue by making it right-in, right-out only from North Druid Hills Road. Many residents opposing the traffic calming petition say if those three roads are partially closed off, the remaining
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PHOTOS BY DYANA BAGBY Clockwise from top left: Speed bumps are common traffic calming features throughout Brookhaven, a roundabout at Town Brookhaven is more of a traffic control measure, a motorist slows while driving over a speed bump on Oglethorpe Drive in Brookhaven Heights and splitter islands on Caldwell Road are meant to slow motorists.
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two roads off North Druid Hills – Pine Grove Avenue and Colonial Drive – will be flooded with even more traffic congestion. The council has deferred the vote, and residents along with City Councilmember Bates Mattison, who represents the area, are trying to hammer out a compromise before the vote. “Traffic calming can be so emotional,” Meehan said. “But it’s not our job to be the referee for a neighborhood. We put the burden on the neighborhood liaison.” But this is just one of at least 10 traffic calming petitions currently under consideration by the city. Most requests are for more speed bumps and other “passive measures” such as chicanes, which are a series of road-narrowing curves, or striping to make lanes narrower, Meehan said. “We get one or two calls a week. We’ve gotten a lot more calls since Brookhaven Heights,” Meehan said. There are several other neighborhoods beginning the process that takes approximately a year to get through, Meehan said. The process begins with a minimum of 20 percent of residents in a neighborhood agreeing they want
traffic calming. When the city receives the 20 percent, it begins city-funded traffic studies to determine if such measures are indeed needed, Meehan said. Residents must also agree to pay $25 a year to cover maintenance and installation, Meehan said. Last year, for example, the city collected about $65,000 in traffic calming fees. Traffic studies for neighborhoods can cost more than $1,000. The study for Brookhaven Heights cost about $3,000, Meehan said. Installing a single speed bump costs approximately $3,500. The city works with neighborhoods to determine what is best, with most residents just wanting more speed bumps, Meehan said. Other traffic calming measures include “splitter islands” that are supposed to slow motorists as they pass into a narrower strip of road; roundabouts; a “gateway treatment,” usually a brick monument with the name of a neighborhood on it that could dissuade people from entering; and striping to narrow traffic lanes, squeezing motorists into tighter spaces that, hopefully, causes them to slow down. BH