A small (around 20) but engaged group of residents met with Brentwood Police Wednesday night at the Recreation Center to talk about speeding and traffic problems. Police Chief Dan Fitzgerald invited residents to the meeting after receiving an increased number of complaints about cars speeding in neighborhoods.
While residents want police intervention, they agreed that reworking traffic patterns and educating neighbors may yield the best results.
“It’s the world we live in now days,” Fitzgerald said. “Everyone wants to get where they’re going in 1.6 seconds.”
In addition to a perceived increase in cars speeding on residential streets, residents also voiced concerns about increased volume on neighborhood streets and the disregard for stop signs posing a safety hazard for children walking to school and people walking their dogs.
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Many residents posed possible ways to slow traffic including speed bumps – which also slow fire trucks and damage snow plows – and turning some streets into one ways.
Ultimately the issue is a Brentwood problem—when police monitor side streets and cite drivers for speeding, those drivers are mostly Brentwood residents, not visitors from surrounding towns.
“What can we do to tell our neighbors?” said one resident. “We need to be continually educating our neighbors.”
Fitzgerald agreed, “The responsibility [for public safety] is ours, first through education. We want people to think about what they’re doing and give them a chance to take responsibility for themselves first.”
To that end, the chief brought a flier for a traffic calming measure called the Neighborhood Pace Car Program, which originated in Boise, ID. By participating in the program, residents put signage on their cars and pledge to obey the speed limit and other posted signs. If implemented, Brentwood would be the first municipality in the St. Louis metro area to participate.
In addition to citizen-driven solutions, an effort will be made to work with Brentwood schools to raise awareness among parents driving their children to and from school.
The chief posted notifications on nextdoor, the brentwood facebook group, and his blog.
If I had been aware of this meeting, I would have attended. First time I heard of it was just now – 10 days after the meeting here on 40southnews. I didn’t see a notification from the city on it. We have issues on our street and it would have been a great meeting to attend if I’d had the opportunity. Thank you!
I see some mention of making it more difficult to get around town, but how much of the discussion focused on making it faster or easier to get around Brentwood without having to drive on residential streets in the first place?
If you address the traffic problems on Eager, Brentwood, and Hanley, there would be little motivation to drive through neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the “build now, plan later” attitude in Brentwood over the last 15 years has brought us here, and you need only drive to Whole Foods or Trader Joes on a Saturday afternoon to see that.
When calling for things like speed bumps and one-way streets designed to slow down traffic, keep in mind that they also impede police, fire trucks, and ambulances. Every second matters when your family needs urgent help, so these “solutions” can do more harm than good.
Bottom line: the one sure way to change undesirable behavior is to make it easier for people to do the right thing.
I like the Metro Pace Car idea, although I don’t think it will do much. I am usually pretty anti red light or speed camera, but that is when it comes to multilane main roads. On our residential streets, I’m all for speed cameras.
I think we should also look into the 85+ year old drivers in town who cant see over their dashboard and create a hazzard everytime they get behind the wheel. Last saturday I was almost run over in the schnucks lot and the driver didnt even know that she came close to running me over.
It’s every man for himself in a parking lot, Mr. 😎
You are not alone, Jerry.
People who disregard the traffic laws will not obey the laws until it is painful enough for them to change.
We don’t have, and cannot afford enough police people to enforce the traffic laws AND I seem to be the only person who likes the ONLY other viable method of enforcement (Red Light and Speeding Cameras), so we need to stand by the street and yell at drivers to sto or slow down.
Good luck with that.
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