Residents of a Colorado Springs neighborhood awake early to express concerns about speeding
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — A handful of residents in the University Park neighborhood behind the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs gathered before sunrise at one of two roundabouts that have become a safety concern.
The group met with KRDO13’s The Road Warrior on Collegiate Drive, a block west of Union Boulevard, where drivers regularly exceed the posted 25 mph speed limit.
Collegiate, along with nearby Rockhurst Boulevard, has roundabouts at the bottom of two steep hills.
Residents said that there have been several close calls with vehicles nearly hitting people or pets.
“The roundabouts aren’t wide enough,” said Randy Schulz, who moved to the neighborhood last fall. “People can almost drive straight through them. Drivers don’t even slow down when people are at crosswalks, walking their dogs. We’re going to have a tragedy here if this keeps up.”
Some residents confirmed that a pedestrian was recently struck by a vehicle on Rockhurst, but they don’t know the extent of her injury.
Much of the speeding concern comes from senior citizens and retirees in the neighborhood.
But the problem isn’t unique to University Park.
The Colorado Springs department said that it is gradually investigating more than 1,200 neighborhood speeding complaints throughout the city.
“We have limited manpower and resources to cover them all,” said spokesman Ira Cronin. “We prioritize them based on where they happen, how frequently they happen, and whether an injury or fatality occurred.
Police conducted a traffic evaluation in the spring and determined that Collegiate has “visibility issues” that affect drivers’ ability to see pedestrians crossing the street.
While neighbors believe that most of the speeding traffic is from drivers cutting through the neighborhood to avoid congestion on nearby Academy and Union Boulevards, Cronin said that some speeding drivers live in the neighborhoods they’re cited in.
“We’re glad you’re doing this story and calling attention to the matter,” he said. “The best and easiest thing is for everyone to just slow down.”
Both streets have speed feedback signs (speed limit signs that activate flashing lights when passing drivers exceed the speed limit), but on Collegiate, the sign isn’t close to the roundabout.
“We could put safety trailers (speed feedback signs attached to trailers) or a speed safety vehicle (equipped with a camera to cite speeders) there,” Cronin explained. “But the trailers would block the bike lanes, and the speed safety vehicles are dedicated to school zones during the day.”
The city’s traffic engineering office is aware of the speeding concern in University Park, and plans to install more feedback signs this month.
“If they do not sufficiently reduce speeds, (we) plan to work with residents to evaluate additional traffic-calming measures, which could include speed humps,” the city said in a statement released Monday.
That possibility pleases Schulz.
“We wanted humps before, but we were told that the fire department didn’t like them because they could affect emergency response times,” he said.
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