Residents Protest Higher Speed Limit

Dismayed about a county decision to raise the speed limits on a thoroughfare they say is one of the most dangerous in this small unincorporated area, Oak Park residents protested the decision Tuesday.

“People always go five miles higher than the posted speed limit,” said Jim Gehrlein, one of 60 residents who showed up at an Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council meeting to voice anger over plans to raise the speed limit on Lindero Canyon Road from 35 mph to 45 mph. “Even at 35 [mph] we had to inch out onto Lindero Canyon Road because people came so fast around the curve. At 45 miles it’s going to be incredible.”

For months, residents have petitioned the county for greater enforcement of traffic violations ranging from speeding to cruising through stop signs. But raising speed limits was not what they had in mind.

“We have zero enforcement of the 35 mph limit as it is. That’s why they have so many people going 45 now,” said Alicia Hair, an Oak Park resident.

In addition, the speed limits on Doubletree Road and Sunnycrest Drive will be raised from 35 mph to 40 mph.

Council members were equally upset about the plan.

“They come up with the idiotic things knowing themselves that it is stupid,” Councilman Kent Behringer said before the meeting. “I don’t care what figures they have to justify it.”

Butch Britt, the county’s deputy director of public works, told the council that the state requires the county to review the speed limits it posts on local roads every five years.

By law, speed limits must approximate the prevailing speed at which reasonable drivers travel a road. Oak Park residents want an artificially low speed limit, he said.

In a survey finished last week, Britt found that 85% of the drivers on Lindero Road travel at 46 mph.

Despite residents’ protests that too many accidents occur on Lindero, Britt said that only six were reported from 1992 to 1994.

“Those roads are in pretty good shape,” he said. “They are new and fairly well-designed, fairly wide, with 8-foot bike lanes and very few driveways accessing them.”