(The following is a Letter to the Editor from a reader in response to a recent column by Lansdale Mayor Garry Herbert about the deliberations that go into the decision to add stop signs to borough roads. The
views expressed herein are the writer's own.)
I am replying to Mayor Herbert’s Mayoral Musings column regarding the "Truth About Stop Sign Requests.” I live on Perkiomen Avenue in the West Ward neighborhood of Lansdale, and I wholeheartedly believe our neighborhood would benefit from more four-way stop intersections, and I do not accept his arguments regarding the complexity of accomplishing such a change to the neighborhood’s traffic patterns.
Currently, the vast majority of intersections in the West Ward are only two-way stop intersections, and their arrangement is inconsistent. As a result, a motorist traveling the length of any given street in our neighborhood will find themselves alternating between the stopper and the proceed-er from one block to the next. This flow of traffic is dangerously non-intuitive.
Furthermore, the West Ward is home to York Avenue Elementary, the only school in the North Penn district without a busing program; as well as Whites Road Park, the largest and most prominent park in the borough; the borough’s library; several daycares and preschools; several houses of worship; and several small businesses. The students and pedestrians frequenting these establishments and destinations deserve protection and deference from motorists. I believe four-way stop intersections would achieve this.
In addition, the prevalence of street parking in the West Ward makes crossing particular streets dangerous even for motorists, as cars parked too closely to intersections obstruct sight lines and hide cross traffic from view. The motorists of our neighborhood deserve the benefit of safe and predictable traffic patterns. Again, I believe four-way stop intersections would achieve this.
I found, then, Mayor Herbert’s latest musing regarding stop signs uncompelling, and would like to offer a rebuttal to three specific points that he offered towards illustrating the complexities of stop sign instillation:
"… if someone crashes at the intersection of a newly placed stop sign and we are out of alignment with PennDOT regulations we will very likely be held liable in court for the damage done to all drivers involved. By following PennDOT’s rules we are mitigating our legal risks and ensuring that the community, and taxpayer dollars, are not wasted on legal expenses.”
My reaction to the borough’s apparent risk aversion on this matter is to wonder, is the borough similarly wary of FAILING to place a stop sign at an intersection where one is warranted, and being liable for an accident occurring there? Certainly, this type of accident is already occurring throughout the borough (at least, a motorist could, ostensibly, find an attorney to argue as much). But how many lawsuits have actually been brought against the borough on these grounds? Which is to ask, is this a real problem?
I also wonder, where was this wariness of liability when the stop signs on Vine St. in front of the library were removed? Some poor kid getting hit by a car while crossing the street in front of the library where there USED to be a stop sign sure sounds like a lawsuit to me, but the borough managed to find the gumption to proceed with that decision.
To me, it seems suspiciously selective that the borough’s wariness of liability only seems to move in one direction on this matter.
"However, in the rules it also stipulates that a sign can be deployed if ‘high speeds, restricted view, or crash records indicate a need for control by the STOP sign.’ So, how many crashes are enough to warrant a stop sign? According to PennDOT ‘five or more reported crashes in a 12-month period for […] the most recent 3 years of available crash data’ warrants the review for a stop sign. […] …and we do not currently have an intersection that has recorded five or more crashes in a 12-month window.”
Indeed, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices stipulates a volume of five or more crashes in a 12-month period as one criterion for multi-way (i.e., four-way) stop sign application. However, it ALSO stipulates:
"Other criteria that may be considered in an engineering study [for a multi-way STOP sign application] include:
"A – The need to control left-turn conflicts;
"B – The need to control vehicle/pedestrian conflicts near locations that generate high pedestrian volumes;” (Say, like York Ave. Elementary, or our now-less-pedestrian-friendly library)
"C – Locations where a road user, after stopping, cannot see conflicting traffic and is not able to negotiate the intersection unless conflicting cross traffic is also required to stop; and
"D – An intersection of two residential neighborhood collector (through) streets of similar design and operating characteristics where multi-way stop control would improve traffic operation characteristics of the intersection.”
These criteria are much more subjective than the criteria the mayor saw fit to include in his musing, and the bar they set is much lower. Such that, I would submit there is not a single two-way stop intersection in my neighborhood that doesn’t meet ALL of these criteria and would not, as a result, qualify to become a four-way stop intersection.
The mayor’s decision to omit these additional criteria from his musing makes me question his objectivity on the matter. It is this constituent’s hope that the traffic engineers the borough enlists to conduct the hopefully-upcoming traffic study do not similarly overlook these additional, less rigorous criteria.
"According to PennDOT, a stop sign is a traffic control device. It is not a speed control device. This distinction is important because the primary deployment of a stop sign, according to PennDOT, is not to decrease the speed of a roadway, it is to mitigate and manage traffic flow. […] Additionally, as noted above, it stipulates that if high speeds are present a stop sign may be a solution. […] In lieu of a traffic study, the Lansdale Police Department will deploy a speed study on a roadway to determine if the average speed is reaching an unsafe level. We have deployed dozens of these studies in my time as Mayor and I have never seen a speed study come back with an average speed higher than 35 MPH...”
The mayor is clear that speeding motorists cannot be used to justify the instillation of stop signs. However, he also implies that the LACK of speeding motorists could justify the DENIAL of a stop sign request. And to be fair to the mayor, the MUTCD does seem to flirt with contradiction on this matter of speeding motorists as justification for stop signs, but in my opinion, his decision to entertain the contradiction because it ultimately supports the denial of a stop sign potentially betrays, again, a lack of objectivity.
To conclude, this constituent would like to remind the mayor that his duty is to represent his constituents to the borough apparatus, not to represent the apparatus to us.
Towards that, even if the borough IS wary of some legal liability associated with more stop signs, if we the taxpayers are willing to incur that risk for the benefit of safer streets, shouldn’t that have a place in the borough’s calculus on the matter?
Instead, our potential tolerance for this hypothetical juridical risk has not been heard. Meanwhile, our tolerance for the risk of dodging traffic on the way to story time at the library was just, I guess, presumed.
I hope the mayor and council can try to recalibrate their thinking on this matter and will take seriously the rising tide of support for more stop signs throughout the borough.
— Robert Kirkner, Perkiomen Avenue
