By: Diane Benjamin
Thank Alderman Joni Painter and Mayor Tari Renner for the 30 MPH speed limit. The citizens of Bloomington paid for TWO studies of Hershey Road and BOTH were ignored.
The speed limit was lowered to 30 because of 100 signatures on a petition. The petition to change it back now has close to 700 signatures.
The first study was done in 2014 Knight E/A Inc. Since Hales can spend money up to $50,000 without Council approval, this study was probably never on the agenda for approval. If you forgot, that vote happened in 2015. See the story HERE. If you need more proof that Painter, Mwilambwe, Black and the rest of Council don’t represent citizens – that vote proves it. Stearns wanted the $50,000 lowered to $30,000. She was only supported by Kevin Lower.
Here’s what Knight recommended in their 293 page report:
See the entire report Here. Other roads are also included. I found this payment to Knight E/A:
This study wasn’t good enough, so in 2016 another study was done by Farnsworth. See that 27 page report HERE
ISD means Intersection Sight Distance. It’s harder to know how much this study cost taxpayers since Farnsworth is paid frequently for lots of projects. The Knight E/A study looks like it was paid from Motor Fuel Tax money, so I found this one paid to Farnsworth listing the same information:
Regardless of the cost – both of these studies were ignored. I wonder if Painter’s re-election has anything to do with her being able to put a speed limit question of the agenda when aldermen never have been able to before. Since she has nothing but voting for tax increases to run on, you decide.
This speed limit change is totally stupid. So the rich folKs over there have more power than the thousands of people who use the road?
It is the 600 “rich folks” who use Hersey to drive to State Farm South who want the speed limit to revert to 35 or 40 mpg on the stretch north of GE road. They are not happy, and rightly so, because the decision to reduce the limit to 30mpg which affects them but has nothing to do with the original study or design change was made without those citizens’ input.
Lol, I love the smell of libs suffering from their libtard devices first hand.
That kid might be MAYOR or CITY MANAGER some day!
Joni should have NEVER had a LONE say in the matter in the first place!
The entire Council got to vote based on what was fed to them, not reality.
I signed the petition and I am resident of Spring Ridge. I signed because I feel that “slower is usually safer”. There are couple of other factors that I haven’t seen addressed. One, two bus stops have been recently added. Right next (north) of the SR entrance/exit and across from it. If there should happen to be a south-bound bus stopped (and I’ve yet to see one there, which is a whole different subject) cars coming from the north will have heck of a time merging into the center lane to continue their journey. Especially on slick roads. Slowing down and waiting behind the bus, of course, would be out of the question. Two, northbound cars wanting to turn (left) into SR better have their turn signal on as soon as they cross GE Road or be in danger of being rear ended. Lastly, I’ve been timing the traffic whenever I leave SR. It seems to me that the traffic flow has been slowed from 50 to a little less than 40. Unless, of course, it’s during the am/pm rush hours.
Both reports did say the speed limit appears optional