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“The property damage is alarming,” Assistant City Manager Kent Johnson told a City Council committee. “Cars are being pushed onto private property. This intersection has had more concerning accidents than any other one on North Avenue.”
Many crashes happen when westbound North Avenue drivers take left turns onto Maple, according to the city. Others occur when Maple drivers cross all four lanes of North.
Maple is a popular north-south choice for drivers because it crosses the railroad tracks a few blocks to the south.
The city is considering putting up signs to bar left turns onto Maple. To do that, it would have to go through the state Department of Transportation, which owns North Avenue.
Officials said it would be difficult to put in islands on Maple Avenue because of the space. Such islands, which are on Addison Avenue’s link to North, only let drivers take right turns.
As it happens, officials said, plenty of drivers take left turns onto Addison, despite the islands.
During the meeting, aldermen expressed concern that a left-turn prohibition at Maple would cause more drivers to use Elm Street, which is west of Maple. But they favored action, given the number of crashes.
“I would be a proponent of no left turns,” said Alderman Mike Brennan, who heads the council’s public safety committee. “Prohibiting them totally would be logical for me.”
The aldermen said they backed the city staff’s efforts to find a solution with the state.
In December, both alderwomen from the ward in question, Marti Deuter (who has since left the council) and Jennifer Veremis, asked for a city committee to review Maple and North avenues.
They said they were informed in November of two serious crashes that occurred the same day at the intersection.
Also on Monday, the committee discussed reversing a decision last year to convert a four-way stop at Glenview Avenue and Third Street to a two-way.
This issue came up as the result of a request from the ward’s two aldermen, Jacob Hill and Karen Sienko. They said the traffic study that called for the change did not take into account bus stops near the intersection.
City staffers said five school buses stop at Glenview and Third.
Other intersections along Third have even more stops. As part of the city’s review, the city engineer, Ted Sianis, created a map indicating the number of bus stops in neighborhoods around town.
Third Street has an unusually large number of bus stops compared with other areas. Officials said that was likely because the local school district did not want students crossing the railroad tracks to the south and North Avenue to the north.
Committee members said they wanted more information on Glenview and Third before deciding on going back to a four-way.