Residents in LR ward spurn traffic circle approved earlier

Cars travel through an intersection Thursday on Pleasant Forest Drive. Several residents in the Pleasant Valley area have organized opposition to the city’s plan to put a traffic circle in their neighborhood.
Cars travel through an intersection Thursday on Pleasant Forest Drive. Several residents in the Pleasant Valley area have organized opposition to the city’s plan to put a traffic circle in their neighborhood.

A proposed traffic-calming measure in Little Rock’s Pleasant Valley neighborhood has been halted after many residents opposed the necessity and effectiveness of the plan.

Most of the 100 residents who attended the Public Works Department’s community meeting earlier this month on placing a two-lane traffic circle at the intersection of Pleasant Valley Drive and Arkansas Valley Drive vehemently opposed the idea. Ward 4 City Director Brad Cazort received more than 60 emails on the topic, many of which objected to the traffic circle.

Because of the strong opposition, Cazort asked that other improvement requests for the neighborhood be considered instead of the traffic circle.

“They don’t want it. So there’s no point, even though that project was put on the list because it was requested by the neighborhood before,” Cazort said. “But a large group of people in a meeting say they don’t want it, and there’s just no point spending money on something they don’t want.”

The request for the traffic circle originated from meetings held after 2011 when voters approved a portion of a sales-tax increase to be spent on capital improvement projects. At those meetings, the city took requests on how to spend the tax revenue and then came up with a list of projects by ward. Ward 4 was allocated $2.6 million for 13 projects to be completed by 2015, including the traffic circle.

About $50,000 has already been spent on engineering designs for the two-lane traffic circle, but when the city took the project back before the public at a meeting this month, residents opposed it.

“There are more pressing needs in the area that should be addressed than these ridiculous projects,” William Bush wrote in an email to Cazort. “For example, look at Rodney Parham Road - no curbs, gutters or storm drains. … The funds designated to build a bike trail along Rodney Parham that goes nowhere and a roundabout on Pleasant Valley that no one wants or needs could be used to solve this drainage problem.”

Rachael Bernardi, a 14-year resident of the area, said she was surprised at the intensity of disapproval from her neighbors, but agreed with the consensus that there are less-expensive options for slowing traffic at such intersections.

Several residents suggested that strategically placed speed bumps would be a more economical and effective way to calm traffic and wouldn’t require the months of construction to build a traffic circle. They also said a traffic circle would cause confusion.

The Pleasant Valley Property Owners Association voted to oppose the traffic circle. Its board instead advocated that the money to be spent on drainage issues along Rodney Parham Road.

Cazort has told his Ward 4 constituents that he is committed to widening Rodney Parham Road but has advised them that expensive projects like that will have to be addressed in future funding cycles. Such a project would take up this round’s entire allocation, he said.

To officially take the Pleasant Valley traffic circle off the table, the Little Rock Board of Directors will have to amend the ordinance that listed it as a project to be funded in Ward 4.

Before that is taken to the board, however, Cazort said Public Works staff must look back through a list of requests from Ward 4 to determine what projects can be completed with about $550,000 in a relatively short period of time. Since the city took out a three-year bond, the money must be spent before 2015, Cazort said.

While a large majority of Pleasant Valley residents who showed up to the most recent community meeting didn’t want the traffic circle, there were others who supported it.

“I understand that the construction process may temporarily disrupt things in the area, but feel that the long-term benefits make it worthwhile,” David Collier-Tenison said, adding that he’s confident the design would have improved traffic flow and increased safety at the intersection. “I think that this will especially be apparent during school arrival and dismissal times. The current intersection does not safely allow for buses and cars to properly reverse course on Pleasant Valley, which many do anyway.”

He said he’s seen the positive effect of traffic circles at intersections in Conway and his recent travels to Europe.

Public Works’ Civil Engineering Division Manager Mike Hood said he doesn’t completely understand the objection to traffic circles that the city has heard recently.

At a community meeting in Ward 5 last week, the city asked for feedback on putting in a one-lane traffic circle at the intersection of Hinson Road and Pebble Beach Drive. The city ordinance that approved funding the various ward projects mentioned improvements to the intersection and said “miscellaneous traffic calming” would be implemented throughout the ward, but didn’t specifically mention a traffic circle.

After evaluating that intersection, Public Works determined that a traffic circle would work well there, but residents who attended the meeting said they didn’t think it was appropriate. Some who lived at the intersection worried about being able to pull out of their driveways during high traffic times.

The master project list by ward includes building two other traffic circles - both in Ward 3. One at the intersection of McKinley Boulevard and Pine Valley Road was requested by the area neighborhood association, and the other at Zoo Drive and Fair Park Boulevard only involves city and zoo-owned property.

A public meeting about the McKinley and Pine Valley intersection improvements will be scheduled in the coming months to hear from property owners there, Hood said.

As far as the overall objection to new traffic circles that the city has heard so far, Hood speculates some of it can be attributed to the feature being relatively new to Little Rock and residents being unfamiliar with them.

Arkansas, Pages 13 on 04/20/2014

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