Hempfield Township engineers compiling speeding data to slow drivers on Fosterville Road
HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) -- A recent traffic and speed study on Fosterville Road in Hempfield Township, Westmoreland County, shows that cars and trucks are going too fast.
Last month, residents along Fosterville Road were asked to participate in a traffic survey to help the township understand the speeding problem on the street.
Now, data from that survey is being compiled and the township and its engineers are starting to formulate a plan to slow down speeding drivers.
The data from the survey is being compiled by the township's municipal engineers at Gibson-Thomas Engineering, who say 80% of the vehicles traveling on Fosterville Road are going 10 miles over the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour, but they say that's not the worst of it.
"What was really concerning is, when we did our speed study, was the maximum speeds we were finding," said Mark Szewcow, a traffic engineer with Gibson-Thomas Engineering. "We were finding vehicles traveling up to 70 mph on this rather small, residential, neighborhood street."
Though Fosterville has several stop signs along the road to try and slow motorists down, people allegedly use the road as a quick cut-through to get to either Route 136 or Old Route 119.
Gibson-Thomas says that once they have fully analyzed all the data, they will present the township with several traffic calming measures from the PennDOT Traffic Calming Handbook.
This could include things like adding new pavement markings to better define the road, installing chicanes that would make people have to slow down to weave around obstacles, and recommending speed humps in certain spots.
Gibson-Thomas adds that speed humps, while they work to slow vehicles, do have a slight drawback.
"Not only do they slow down traffic going through the neighborhood," Szewcow said, "but it also slows down emergency responders. Be it fire trucks, ambulances, or police, it also slows those vehicles down. Not a lot. I believe PennDOT states that it could be within 10 seconds, but when an emergency vehicle is on its way to either the hospital or a residence, every second counts."
Once all this data is officially collected and presented to the township this winter, changes could start coming to this roadway as early as next spring.
