ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701240021
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETTY HAYDEN SNIDER\STAFF WRITER
LITTLEPAGE Bryant has thought about putting up a big sign: "Roanoke city: Please stop the speeding on our street."
The Southwest Roanoke resident is tired of motorists using her street as a shortcut between the Wasena neighborhood and Grandin Road. One of her neighbors says Maiden Lane is like a speedway sometimes.
Someone should have waved a caution flag Jan. 4.
Bryant, called Page by friends, and her husband, Frank, threw a going-away party that Saturday night for a friend who was moving to Chicago. They hung a banner across their front porch that spelled out good luck three times in large round letters.
About 10, the group decided to continue the festivities downtown. Everyone crowded into a few cars, leaving the extra vehicles parked along the 1600 block of Maiden.
About a half-hour later, a man, who police said might have been trying to avoid a dog, lost control of his pickup truck and hit a parked car with enough force to break off his right front wheel.
The truck kept going, crushing the rear end of another parked car, then striking the side of a third car. He made it past two more houses and around a corner before hitting a stop sign at the corner of Maiden and Denniston Avenue.
The last two cars belonged to friends of the Bryants who were at the party. So much for good luck.
A dozen or so neighbors heard the commotion and came out to check on the driver. He was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, and later was charged with reckless driving. His case is pending.
This wasn't the first such accident on Maiden Lane, just the most recent one. Five days earlier, a car hit several parked cars before ramming a utility pole.
The neighborhood has tried unsuccessfully for years to get four-way stop signs put up to slow people down along the four-block stretch of Maiden that runs from Wasena Avenue to Winborne Street.
"We have disabled and elderly people who live here who can't even cross the street because of the traffic," said Carol Farley, who lives in the 1700 block with her mother, who is disabled.
Most residents are afraid to park their cars on the street, Farley said, but then they have trouble backing out of their driveways because of the traffic.
Neighbor Howard Starkloff agrees.
"They give you obscene gestures if they have to slow down."
Roanoke police Lt. Ramey Bower, who oversees the traffic bureau, sympathizes with the Maiden Lane residents, but says their problem is not unique in Roanoke or in any other metropolitan area.
His officers have been running radar on Maiden for years, but he said they seldom catch anybody.
Police wrote five speeding tickets on Maiden in the first half of January. They average about 600 tickets a month citywide.
Two officers who often run radar in the Bryants' neighborhood estimated that the average speed of vehicles in the 25-mph zone is 31 to 32 mph. That's with police present, but they said without a cruiser around, the average speed might jump to the 38- to 40-mph range.
The residents who talked about the need for stop signs were quick to commend the police response to their complaints. One woman said she has called about speeders, and within 30 minutes has seen an officer set up radar.
But, they know that can't always happen.
Because police cannot run radar enough "to give the street a reputation," as resident Joanne Starkloff calls it, the neighborhood has turned to the city for help.
Traffic engineer Bob Bengtson said at least two traffic studies have been done in the neighborhood in recent years. Both times, the street failed to meet national guidelines for stop signs.
After the Jan. 4 accident, Bengtson said his office received another request for stop signs, so another study is being done. But he said stop signs probably wouldn't solve the street's problem.
"Stop signs aren't supposed to be put up to control speed," he said. "They're to direct traffic flow."
The city receives at least one request a week for a new stop sign somewhere, but few of those requests are approved.
"If the city put them up everywhere, it might diminish the importance of stop signs," Bengtson said. Once motorists noticed there never seemed to be vehicles stopped on the cross streets, they would start ignoring the signs.
The police agree with Bengtson that stop signs are not always the answer. Sometimes, people drive even faster between stop signs because they're angry that they have to stop.
And, once new signs are put up, residents often call to complain about people running them. When it's time to write the tickets, police say, it's often residents they pull over. In some cases, they have seen new signs put up and taken down in the span of a couple weeks.
Whatever happens on Maiden Lane, Bower said his officers will keep running radar as often as they can. They also might set up a safety trailer, which houses a radar gun that displays the passing motorists' speeds to remind them how fast they are going.
It's important for the residents to remain involved and continue reporting problems to police, said Sgt. P.B. Shumate, a traffic officer. "When they call down here with concerns, it doesn't fall on deaf ears."
On Tuesday, police set up their mobile safety trailer on Maiden Lane. It has a radar unit that measures each vehicle's speed and posts it as it goes by.
The residents have not given up, but they are fed up. The Bryants don't park on the street anymore, and they probably won't feel right asking their guests to either.
When they got home the night of the accident, it was an unfortunately familiar sight.
Two and a half years ago, a man lost control of his car and slammed into Frank Bryant's pickup truck, which had been parked on the street. The car got wedged under the truck and pushed it into the next-door neighbor's front yard.
After the most recent accident, the Bryants consider themselves lucky that the accident didn't happen a half-hour earlier. The couple and their friends had stood on the street for several minutes before moving their party downtown.
"Somebody could have been killed," Page Bryant said.
Even though her friends might be stuck with some costly repair bills because the pickup driver was uninsured, Page still has a sense of humor about the mishaps that continue to plague her street.
"Is anybody going to come see me?" she asked with a chuckle. "I can't even have a party without everybody getting their cars totaled."
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. Littlepage and Frank Bryant areby CNBamong the residents of Maiden Lane who are concerned about the
traffic on their street. They have asked the city for four-way stop
signs in an attempt to curb speeding. color. 2. Officer D.L. Allen
of the Roanoke Police Department investigates an accident earlier
this month on Maiden Lane in Southwest Roanoke. A truck destroyed
three parked vehicles before coming to a stop.