Village of Yellow Springs says, ‘Slow down!’
- Published: December 4, 2024
TOWN TRAFFIC
This is the first in a series examining traffic flow and safety, and the ways people get around in Yellow Springs.
Like any small town surrounded by rural roads, Yellow Springs sees its fair share of speedy drivers entering municipal limits.
At each of the village ingresses, township and county speed limits plummet from 55 miles per hour to at least 35 — in most places, 25. In a concerted effort to curb those drivers who don’t slow down as quickly as the law mandates, Village leadership has, in recent weeks, instated new traffic calming measures and infrastructure on several local roads.
On West Yellow Springs-Fairfield road, between St. Paul Catholic Cemetery and Polecat Road, are three new speed humps, each two inches in height and three feet in width.
Those humps were installed last week, and after some reconstruction — as Fillmore Construction incorrectly installed them Friday at four inches tall, which led to considerable online backlash from community members — are now painted a reflective yellow.
A fourth permanent speed hump of the same dimensions was also installed last week on Limestone Street, just slightly east of where it branches off Dayton Street.
Farther west on Dayton Street is a stricter speed limit — one that forces drivers going east to slow down from 35 mph to 25 beginning at the Kenneth Hamilton Way intersection. Previously, eastbound drivers weren’t forced to slow to 25 until they reached Stafford Street.
According to Village Manager Johnnie Burns, this particular traffic change was made not just to slow drivers much earlier before they reach the pedestrian-heavy downtown business district, but also because of the increase in traffic entering and exiting the newly established Spring Meadows subdivision onto Dayton Street from Kenneth Hamilton Way and Wright Street.
Elsewhere in town, signs and curbs are now more visible. Several bump-outs at some downtown intersections — where slightly rounded curbs extend into the road, thereby narrowing the road and naturally slowing traffic — are also a reflective yellow. Four flashing stop signs along Limestone Street and flashing 25 mph signs on Xenia Avenue and Dayton Street have also been erected in recent weeks.
“The people in this community spoke up and we listened,” Manager Burns told the News in a phone interview earlier this week. “Safety is our highest concern. People need to slow down.”
By his own admission, Burns said he was previously opposed to the idea of installing speed humps anywhere in the village, but after seeing the efficacy of a temporary hump on Fairfield in slowing drivers, he changed his mind.
“I truly believe these can save lives,” Burns said.
More traffic calming measures and infrastructure improvements are on the horizon, he added. In the coming year, Burns will turn his attention to the intersections of Xenia Avenue and Dayton Street, as well as Xenia Avenue and State Route 343. According to him, both these locations have limited visibility that sometimes compels drivers to pull too far into the intersection before turning.
One of Burns’ chief goals in the near future, though, is to build a sidewalk along Fairfield Pike — one that connects the northwestern-most corner of Yellow Springs to the bike path. As the News has reported earlier this year, the Village had considered a sidewalk proposal for Fairfield, but ultimately, Burns said a funding opportunity expired before any traction could be made.
“Now, I’m doing everything I possibly can to find new funding sources. I am looking nonstop for money to build this sidewalk,” Burns said.
A speed hump saga
The appearance of the new speed humps — categorically different from speed bumps in height, width and the rate at which they slow traffic — could be traced to fall of 2020.
It wasn’t long after village resident Jason Laveck and his family moved into their Fairfield Pike home in September of that year that he observed a frequent occurrence.
“My son was born a month after we moved in, and I remember standing outside with him, watching cars zoom by at speeds over 65 miles per hour,” Laveck told the News, noting that he could clock cars’ exact speeds from neighboring resident Joe Ayers’ mobile radar placed near Laveck’s home.
In early 2022, when Laveck and his family were pushed off Fairfield by a speeder while they were walking toward downtown, he decided he had had enough. He began writing letters to Village Council and attending their meetings, surveying and talking to his neighbors, corresponding with the county board of commissions and more, all in order to find some — any — solution to slow traffic down in front of his home.
As their legal purview ends at municipal limits, Greene County officials were unable to address Laveck’s concerns. In an email correspondence with Laveck that he shared with the News, Greene County Engineer Stephanie Goff noted that increasing law enforcement presence is, in her view, the most effective way to slow down traffic.
Goff also cited planning and engineering research with Laveck that indicated that stop signs, “children at play” signs and speed humps may not be the Village’s best approach to solving his problems.
For example, she wrote that “children at play” signs could “give a false sense of security in letting children play in the roads” and cited a Beaubien study from 1989 that indicated that stop signs may actually increase the peak speed of vehicles because “motorists tend to increase their speed between stop signs to regain the time ‘lost’ at stop signs.”
As for speed humps, Goff noted that they can be expensive to maintain, interfere with response times of emergency vehicles, reduce property values, increase noise levels and more.
Nevertheless, in October of last year, the Village received an estimated $4,000 gift from Fillmore Construction — a temporary speed hump that was installed on Fairfield Pike.
“People actually slowed down,” Laveck said.
But not long after the temporary hump was installed, Laveck began observing a new phenomenon on his road. Some drivers, he said, would honk their horns every time they drove past his home. One driver in particular, YS police found after some complaints from Laveck, was honking “in protest” every time she drove over the hump. Several other drive-by protesters did the same over the following months.
“We were getting honkers at all hours of the day and night and it had become a very large nuisance,” Laveck said.
The anti-hump protest came to a climax the night before Halloween this year. Under the cover of dark, unknown vandals detached the hump and stole it.
At the following Village Council meeting, Monday, Nov. 4, Manager Burns was clearly irate.
Addressing the hump thieves, he had this to say: “You stole government property, but just so you know, we got the message. We’re installing three permanent speed humps, and you won’t be able to steal them.”
Later, Burns told the News that the temporary hump had been recovered; it had been discarded north of Yellow Springs, alongside South Tecumseh Road past Ellis Park. The thieves, Burns said, remain at large. The primary evidence of their identities came from a security camera on Laveck’s home that caught them in the act.
Burns said Clark County officials have an ongoing investigation to determine their whereabouts.
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