My Boring 900 East Saga

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point"
C.S. Lewis
I am not saying that I am courageous by any means(I am actually somewhat wimpy)...but in this issue, I must say, I have often met my testing point. I am talking about safety issues on 900 East. Construction will soon begin (March 5) on speed tables on 900 east (which are low, wide easy on cars...not AF highschool..speed "tables"). I have had periods of time where I have sincerely wondered if putting myself and my reputation on the line was really worth it. I am generally someone who likes to blend into the wallpaper and I don't usually put myself out there too much. It has saddened me with rumors of untrue things that have been told (i.e. We never called police, we never called on individuals for tickets, etc). We (myself and other concerned neighbors) did personally take our own time to take speed studies in order to push the city into doing a speed and safety study which, when finally completed, indicated dangerous levels of speeding on 900 East. The cities traffic study also discovered that much of that traffic is "cut-through" traffic (not local) trying to use a quicker alternate route. The rest is probably us running our kids to and from school. Children hit by a car at the average speed the cars were traveling on 900 East had an estimated 70-85% chance of being killed by a "car" and an almost certainty of death if hit by an "SUV or Mini-van" going that same average speed. We have also spent countless hours attending city council meetings, traffic committee meetings, community meetings, and many hours getting signatures and doing research on potential solutions. It has been an over 2-year process that I will be glad to have over. During the two-year process we got 900 East blocked from going over the rail-road tracks to State Street (which I think would have been a huge disaster for the whole neighborhood) and was in the city plan to happen within the next five years. At this time, there is, under construction, a huge medical office complex (with 500 parking spaces) going in below Haymaker with 900 East as the North entrance. We are hopeful that cut-through speeding traffic will be decreased, in light of this new development and before traffic patterns for this complex are establilshed.
Yesterday we discovered that the city had altered the placements of the speed-tables. I feel bad if people didn't want them close to them...and now they are. I personally would not mind one by our house (they won't inhibit parking etc.). I do wonder myself about the changes in placements. We had hoped for a cross-walk down on the corner by the Houles house which has been changed to a different place (and no longer a cross-walk) due to a man-hole cover which is in the way. I wonder if we need as much signage as the Af planners feel is required. Ultimately, however, I am hopeful that overall it will be a serious improvement in safety for all the children who use the street. I am grateful the city sees fit to do something. Maybe kids can cross the street at the cross-walk without a near-death experience. Perhaps kids can even ride their bikes. People who have the same speed tables in their neighborhoods in Cedar Hills report loving them. I hope that is the case here, I am sure there will be some negatives and some who do not love them. I apologize in advance to them I really do feel bad about that. I wish we had a little more control over the placements and the timing of the installations. I am sure it will be a nightmare and I hope it is not too early with the weather. But I (and I think the neighbors who have also been working on this) do not think I could live with myself, daily witnessing the probem, and doing nothing and then having a child injured or killed. Those are my random and hopefully non-offensive thoughts for the day.