City, county ponder Old Stage Road solutions
From our weekly issue dated November 04, 2009
Old Stage Road in Cave Junction traditionally has been rural, and drivers have grown accustomed to whizzing along at high rates of speed.
But increased residential development in the area, combined with recent vehicle vs. bicycle collisions involving schoolchildren, are prompting calls for changes to that stretch of street.
The matter was brought up by Cave Junction Mayor Don Moore and City Councilor Margaret Miller when the Josephine County Board of Commissioners visited the county building in Cave Junction on Monday, Oct. 26. Resident Richard Miller also expressed concerns.
Even though many of the housing lots along Old Stage are included in the city’s jurisdiction, the road itself is not, as it is currently owned by the county.
Suggested remedies include turning the road over to the city; having the county public works department conduct an audit; reducing the speed limit to 25 mph; extending the school zone designation; and widening the road and adding a bicycle lane.
County commissioners also discussed the issue during their Tuesday, Oct. 27 appearance on the KAJO Radio talk show.
“We’re going to have to address that it is more of an urban use,” said Commissioner Dave Toler. “We need to slow the traffic down; we need to look at more crosswalks. We need to look at a safer situation, particularly for the kids who are using that road.”
Toler added that the county cannot change speed limits, and would have to petition the state to do so.
Commissioner Dwight Ellis said that another possible improvement could be the addition of a four-way Stop sign at the intersection of Old Stage and River Street. Currently, Stop signs are only for traffic on Old Stage.
“There are quite a few ideas that came up, and we will be looking at all of those,” Ellis said.
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Public Works Director Rob Brandes said that his department is aware of the problem.
“It sounds like there’s definitely a mix of cars, pedestrians and bikes that wasn’t there 10 years ago,” Brandes said. “That’s something that does need to be looked at.”
The first step toward slowing down traffic on Old Stage is conducting a traffic count, Brandes said. Such a study could be conducted “fairly quickly,” he said, and should take about a week.
“We should be able to get our engineers out there in the next week or two,” he said. “That will give us the average daily traffic so we have an idea what the speeds are.”
Brandes said that his department would have to determine the amount of right-of-way needed for adding a bike lane.
Public works officials also will be contacting concerned citizens to begin circulating a petition to change the speed limit. That can be done in “relatively short order,” Brandes said.
“From the level of interest, I don’t think it will take long to get signatures,” he said
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