The Fayette County Public Works Department is crafting regulations designed to help slow down speeders in neighborhoods that lie in the unincorporated county.
The county has had success with a speed table, a device that lifts an automobile off the ground to a flat plateau of several feet before bringing them back to the road path at grade level. The current ones are installed on East Banks Road, which was often a cut-through for traffic using Banks Road as a back route to the Fayette Pavilion shopping center and beyond.
But now there are several more subdivisions expressing an interest in slowing down vehicles, and speed tables are a good solution because they can be removed at a later date if problems occur or if traffic patterns change to eliminate the speeding habit of motorists, said Public Works Director Phil Mallon.
Although the details are still being worked out, Mallon has proposed that when a request for a speed table comes in to have a speed survey conducted on the road to determine the speed at the 85th percentile. If it is more than 11 mph over the posted speed limit, a speed table could be erected but it would require support from a two-thirds majority of all the homeowners in the petition area, Mallon told the commission at an informal workshop meeting last week.
The ordinance will be tweaked some more before it will be presented for a final vote, officials said.
Mallon said that there also could be contingencies in place to allow a speed table in subdivisions that didn’t meet the minimum speed variance.
Funding is also a question, and Commissioner Lee Hearn suggested placing a modest fee of $15 a year on the property tax bill of those who benefit from the speed table to help offset part of the county’s costs on the project.
The speed tables are portable and can be removed and reinstalled in other locations but over time they will eventually have to be replaced, officials said.
Hearn said the sheriff’s department has also been effective in using its enforcement powers to target specific vehicles that have been speeding in a subdivision on a routine basis.
