ANTIGO — At a Public Works Committee Meeting Wednesday night, city officials mulled adding stop signs or other signals at both the Dorr and Edison St. intersections of 5th Avenue to slow traffic along the street.
Fifth Ward Alderman Mark Edwards said he brought the proposal to turn the intersections into four-way stops to the committee after feedback from several residents about the dangerousness the current two-way stop setup of the intersections poses to both pedestrians and vehicles entering 5th Avenue.
“It would just make it easier for people to get in and out of there,” Edwards said. “When you’re walking downtown and you’re trying to cross, traffic just doesn’t like stopping for you. With a stop sign there, it would give you an option to get across easier. Most of the downtown businesses are in favor of it. I’ve talked to several residents and they’re very in favor of it. Like I said, when they’re trying to get onto 5th Avenue from Edison and Dorr from the south, it is difficult. You can’t see because of the cars parked in the street. You have to get out there so far, and by the time you get out there, you’re just about hit already.”
Though committee members did not forward any proposal on to the common council for a vote, they along with other officials in attendance suggested a number of alternatives to slow traffic around the intersections — from speed bumps to three-way stops to alternative parking arrangements. One idea that seemed to gain interest involved planting pedestrian crossing signs in the middle of the lanes.
“One thing Mark and I talked about too was possibly getting some of those pedestrian signs that sit right in the middle, just to see if that would help slow people down a little bit,” said Public Works Department Head Charley Brinkmeier. “They’re only a couple hundred bucks. They’re not terribly expensive. We could probably use them elsewhere too.”
Most officials agreed that the area was indeed dangerous, with the discussion at one point landing on the woman that was killed in November after she and her boyfriend were struck and thrown from their motorcycle by an SUV attempting to turn left off of 5th Avenue onto Dorr Street.
“You never know anyway because it happened and it wasn’t there,” said Edwards after it was suggested that perhaps even with stop signs, the collision would not have been prevented. “So we can all guess all day long what would have happened if there had been a stop sign, but I’m just going by what people are saying to me.”
City Administrator Karin Derauf said because of parked cars blocking her view, she too has experienced difficulties turning onto 5th Ave.
“I come on Dorr, and by the time I can cross the intersection, I’m already out into that westbound lane of traffic as 5th runs east-west. I’m already in that westbound lane because if there’s vehicles parked there, you can’t see around them,” she said. “You have to crawl all the way out into the lane to be able to see any traffic coming from the east going west. So now you’re sitting in that westbound lane.”
Ninth Ward Alderman Scott Henricks suggested that perhaps safety issues could be solved on 5th Avenue and other dangerous intersections in the city with increased policing of speeding.
“Speed is an issue,” Henricks said. “And if you think they’re not slowing down on 5th Ave., well, go up on the south side as they come and cross Forrest Ave. out there. It’s 25 miles an hour, but those guys are going 50 or 45…to me, some of this might be an enforcement issue. I’m just saying maybe if we enforce this and the public realizes we’re starting to enforce it, that in itself would have a great impact.”
Edwards, though, said he had spoken to Antigo Police Chief Dan Duley about the situation.
“When I first brought it up to the chief, he put people down there, and he’s only got so many people to do it,” Edwards said. “He can’t patrol there all day long, and once they realize they’re not there, they speed up.”
Several other concerns were raised during the discussion, such as the possibility that adding so many consecutive stop signs in such a small area could create congestion severe enough to make it difficult to back out of angled spaces at all.
Edwards intimated that, along with the elderly trying to cross the street, some of the largest difficulties experienced were by those attempting to back out of angled parking spaces into 5th Avenue, a prospect made difficult by other parked vehicles blocking their vision.
“I’ve been talking to people for probably three, four months about it because they have concerns about the same things,” he said. “When you’re trying to back out, people will not stop. They’ll see your backup lights on, but they will not stop. You’ve got to be aggressive with it. And there again, it’s frustrating for people that aren’t aggressive drivers, it surely is. Someday, we’re going to have something bad happen down there. It’s inevitable at some point that because we have more businesses filling up down there, the more people we have walking down there, so if we don’t start trying to take care of it now, at some point it’s going to get worse.”
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