Catherine Brown, an Upland resident, on Monday night took the Upland City Council to task over the city’s lack of action with regard to traffic and pedestrian hazards on Olive Street at the south end of the city.
Olive Street runs east/west and lies half way between 7th and 8th Streets. At the northeast corner of 8th and Campus Avenue is Olivedale Park. Brown said drivers operating at excessive speeds, line-of-sight limitations and the lack of stop signs at certain intersections is putting pedestrians, primarily children using the park, as well as motorists transiting the area into harm’s way.
“My concern is the speed and traffic on Olive, particularly the speed between Campus and Sultana,” Brown said.
Brown said that she had previously induced the police department to do a survey of the traffic along Olive. “They monitored in that time frame 1,600 cars,” Brown said. “Of those cars, half of them were going 26 miles per hour or more. It is a 25-miles-per-hour zone because it is in front of the park. I’ve got documentation showing that I have been communicating this same problem back to 2012.”
Brown said the data from the survey were alarming. “They found not only were the majority of the cars going over the limit, there were several in excess of 70 miles per hour. This is huge. This is in front of a park. Because of the data, the 85 percentile is now 33 [miles per hour]. It is said that gave legitimate reason to raise the speed limit.”
Increasing the speed limit under the circumstances is ill-conceived, Brown said. She opined that using the survey showing drivers are disregarding the current 25 miles per hour speed limit to raise the limit to 30 or 35 miles per hour would be irresponsible, given the lack of speed limit enforcement on Olive Street led to the current circumstance.
“There is nothing being done to lower people’s speed,” she said. “I’ve asked about speed bumps. I was told ‘no.’ I’ve asked about other things.They’re not even considering it. What is it going to take for our children to be safe at that park? I’m sorry. I cannot accept the fact that it’s not being handled more timely. As I said, it goes back to 2012. It’s 2018. Something needs to be done.”
The danger from excessive speed is exacerbated by further complicating factors, Brown said.
“Other things on Olive I’ve concerned myself with is the different intersections between Sultana and Euclid,” she said. “Between Euclid and First has improved, because the south side now has no parking. All the other intersections north and south do not have a stop sign, only east and west. I’ve provided pictures showing how bad the parking is, because they park right up to the stop sign, right up to the intersection. You literally cannot see between cars. You can’t see through the cars. You can’t see around the trees. You cannot see, period. So, in order for you to get through, you inch out and by the time you inch out enough to see, you’re hit and you’re at fault, because you’re the one that had the stop sign. I asked about stop signs. I was told, ‘No.’ They can’t do stop signs. They can’t restrict the parking in front of those houses because people need it. Those houses all have alley access or driveways or you can park on Olive. Something has to be done to make those intersections safer.”
–Mark Gutglueck