Millwood to take on shortcut

Millwood city officials plan a special meeting next month to consider complaints about commuters using two residential streets as a shortcut.

“We have to do something,” Mayor Dan Mork said. “There’re just too many complaints and safety issues.”

Although there are similar issues all over Millwood, Mork said the special meeting will focus on Empire Way and Fowler Road, which motorists are using to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic at the intersection of Trent Avenue and Argonne Road.

Action can’t come soon enough for residents Mike Ellis and Richard Gardner.

Ellis isn’t particular about what the City Council should do. He wants a lower speed limit, sidewalks, center lines and lots of stop signs – “some kind of control so it’s not worth it to speed down my street, whatever it takes.”

Ellis lives on Fowler Road, near its intersection with Trent Avenue. The road is 21 feet wide in front of his home and has no shoulders or center line.

His friend Gardner, who lives at the corner of Fowler and Dalton Avenue, agrees.

“I would like to see Millwood put a four-way stop on every doggone corner in town, and maybe they’ll get tired of it and go on around on Trent the way they should,” Gardner said.

He lives a block north of Fowler’s intersection with Empire Way, where people headed for the Northwood subdivision or Bigelow Gulch Road make a left turn onto Empire.

From there, it’s an uninterrupted seven-tenths of a mile to Argonne, and that’s where the worst problems occur, Gardner and Mork agreed.

“They think it’s a racetrack, some of them,” said Gardner, who is a member of the city Planning Commission.

He’d like to see a double yellow center line to prohibit passing.

“I’ve had people blow right on around me,” Gardner said. “We have a lady who goes down Empire on a motorized wheelchair, and I just worry about her. Somebody’s just going to take her out.”

He recalled a motorcyclist who “wound it out to the max in every gear” several years ago while racing west on Empire Way.

The motorcycle was going so fast that, when it reached Argonne, it slid through the intersection and struck a building on the other side, Gardner said.

Fed up with the daily parade of people in a hurry to get through Millwood, Ellis pushed city officials to conduct a three-day traffic study last month with help from Spokane County traffic engineers.

The study showed 569 to 773 cars a day on the 750-foot section of Fowler between Trent and Empire.

By using two pneumatic tubes, traffic-counting equipment also recorded the approximate speed of vehicles. The result was speeds averaging 22.1 to 23 mph on Fowler Road Nov. 10-12, and 26.6 to 27 mph on Empire Way.

However, one car was clocked at 77.6 mph on Empire Way about 4 p.m. Nov. 11 and another was going 40 to 45 mph at 8 a.m. The speed limit is 25 mph on Empire and Fowler.

“They get going pretty good on Empire,” Mork said.

The maximum speed on Fowler in the three-day study period was 36.5 mph.

The highest traffic counts, by far, were during the evening rush – around 4 to 5:30 p.m., Mork said. But counts also were relatively high during the morning rush from 7:30 to 9 a.m.

Ellis cited the traffic study at the Dec. 1 City Council meeting, where Gardner joined his call for action. Gardner pledged his support when Ellis took his case to the city Planning Commission on Nov. 24.

Gardner said planning commissioners told Ellis, “We totally agree with you, we totally feel for you, but there is no code or anything that we can enforce.”

Ellis asked the council to reduce the speed on Fowler to 15 mph and on Empire to 20 mph. He also called for four-way stops at every intersection on Empire.

Councilman Kevin Freeman doubted lower speed limits would make a difference, but called for making Empire “unappetizing” to shortcut seekers.

Council members discussed the possibility of trying temporary four-way stop signs at Empire’s intersections with Butler and Woodruff roads, but made no decision.

Mork said city officials took that approach in the area north of City Hall, 9103 E. Frederick Ave., and succeeded only in moving the problem to other areas.

“The council wants a professional approach to this from people who deal with traffic,” Mork said. “We want to have some advice before we just start putting up stop signs on our own.”

Millwood has no specialist, so Mork hopes traffic engineers from Spokane County and Spokane Valley will attend the special meeting in January.

The meeting hasn’t been scheduled, but Mork hopes to set a date at the Jan. 5 council meeting.

Sheriff’s officials also will be invited. The Sheriff’s Office provides police protection in Millwood under contract, and Mork said he already has asked for extra patrols.

“The county has been very responsive to that,” the mayor said.

Millwood maintenance supervisor Cleve McCoul said he is thinking about adding Fowler Road to the city’s six-year street improvement plan, which is to be updated in July.

A sidewalk or a fog line to define the roadway, which is “one of our narrower ones,” might help, he said.

McCoul said other ideas that have been kicked around include speed bumps or dips, but those present safety concerns.

And they could backfire on residents by creating a nerve-jangling thump every time a vehicle hits one, McCoul said.

Cutting through Millwood’s residential areas to avoid traffic also can backfire.

Traffic on Argonne is just as bad at Empire as at Trent, but the right turn is much more difficult.