08-09-2017 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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STAFF REPORT TO: Mayor Keis and Members of City Council FROM: Bill Dircks, Public Works Director DATE: August 4, 2017 RE: Crosswalk/Four-Way Stop Enhancements There are two crosswalks for St. John The Evangelist Church on Little Canada Road and McMenemy Street. They become somewhat dangerous during times when the Church is having an event and numerous people are crossing Little Canada Road and McMenemy Street while cars are also trying to get through. There is a similar setup at the corner of Eli Road and Desoto Street at the crosswalk for Little Canada Elementary School that can get pretty hectic before and after school. There is one four- way stop at the intersection of Viking Drive and Minnesota Avenue that has a lot of drivers going right through the stop signs without stopping and staff would like to make these stop signs more visible to drivers as well. Staff has done research on ways to make the crosswalks and stop signs more visible for drivers so they know to slow down or stop and pay attention. There are signs that have l.e.d. lights on them that continuously flash to make the crosswalk more visible, and there are systems that can be activated with a timer and/or push button and are more of an on-demand style. The thought is the church and school have very definitive times when the crosswalks need to be activated and those times could be set by a timer and then any time a pedestrian wanted to cross outside of the timer periods she could use the push button to activate the crosswalk. If the crosswalk is always blinking, staff feels this causes drivers to become complacent since most of the time there wouldn’t be anyone crossing. Over time they become desensitized and stop paying attention once again. A constantly flashing stop sign does make sense for the four-way stop intersection mentioned above. There isn’t any other way to effectively draw attention to the signs. And while local drivers may become desensitized to the blinking signs, hopefully they have learned to stop by that time. New drivers to the area will notice the blinking sign and, hopefully, stop correctly. Staff has been working with two companies on the pricing for the different systems. Final costs should be available by Wednesday’s meeting. A ballpark figure for three on-demand crosswalks and the always-flashing four-way stop signs is $18,000. These signs are an unbudgeted expense but we have had concerns raised by both the school and the church and with the recent fund transfer to the General Capital Improvement Fund it is able to cover the cost of the signs.