Union citizens should be on the lookout for changes to their residential streets, as the city recently installed new stop signs, speed bumps, and a walkway at several locations to help slow down traffic.
Union Mayor Brad Capps said the city took the action to make the streets safer for residents. “When my generation was young, we could go riding our bikes on our streets with hardly any worries,” Capps said. “But today, folks can’t let their kids near the street in front of their homes because of the traffic.”
Capps continued, “People have been using some of our residential streets as cut-through roads, making the roads less safe for our residents, such as children and walkers,” said Capps. “Our whole goal with the signs and speed bumps is to deter traffic from driving our residential streets and get them back on the main highway. And if they are going to drive our residential streets, we want to slow them down.”
Capps also stated that they felt adding a larger number of stop signs to slow traffic were a more cost-effective to the city than laying down more speed bumps. “Once you put out a stop sign, it’s there for the time being, while the city has to maintain speeds bumps through the years,” Capps said.
Three locations where the new stop signs were placed are now three-way stops, including North Decatur St./Portis St., County Line St./Park St., County Line St./Gordon St., and County Line St./Fifth St.
New stop signs were also added to the intersections of Willow St./Long St. and the intersections of Bolden St./Spinks St., making them four-way stops.
Speed bumps were also added to Bolden Street and Long Street to help deter speeding traffic.
Another safety measure taken by the city was adding a crosswalk on James St., in front of Union Middle School.
Union residents can expect to see the city add more stop signs and speed bumps in the near future, according to Capps. “We have got to slow down traffic on our residential roads, so there will be more to come.”
