Move to lower speed limit on Oakton hits wall

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Updated: February 27, 2012 8:41AM

Some Evanston aldermen applied the brakes to a move to drop the speed limit along a stretch of Oakton Street, voicing concern the move would reroute traffic onto other streets and set a precedent.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, Alderman Coleen Burrus, 9th Ward, pitched council members a final time to drop the speed limit to 20 mph along Oakton Street between Ridge and Dodge avenues.

Burrus said she was seeking relief for residents on Oakton who are experiencing large volumes of truck traffic, noise and speeding cars.

“They can’t get out of their driveways; they have cracks in their walls,” Burrus said.

She said three schools and several parks are adjacent to the route.

“There are a lot of reasons to slow traffic,” she said.

Aldermen were sympathetic to Burrus’s plea, but expressed concern about the precedent they would be setting.

The speed limit on most other major streets in the city, with the exception of McCormick Boulevard, is 30 mph, like Oakton.

Moving the problem

“People aren’t stupid,” said Alderman Don Wilson, whose 4th Ward runs adjacent to the 9th Ward in some places. “They’re going to figure out this street is 20 miles per hour. They’re going to take an alternative route — they’re going to take Main, they’re going to take Dempster. What we’re doing is moving the problem from one place to another. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Alderman Delores Holmes, 5th Ward, echoed a similar view, noting that Oakton is an entryway into the city.

“I think about Church and Emerson and Simpson (streets, in her ward). If we make one 20 miles an hour, then what about the others?”

Moreover, “we have a whole list of things staff has done to try to alleviate the problem,” she said.

She also pointed to changes already in place by staff, responding to concerns raised by Burrus and residents along Oakton.

They include installing lighted speed-display monitors, which flash “slow down” to alert drivers when they are exceeding the speed limit, and establishing target police traffic enforcement several times a year along Oakton Street.

In proposing those and other changes, staff has said they are trying to strike a balance between their commitment to pedestrian safety and even traffic flow.

Aldermen Jane Grover, 7th Ward, and Judy Fiske, 1st Ward, were among those indicating they would support a drop in the speed limit, to 25 mph, but on a wider basis. As support for the move, Grover noted that 25 mph is the designated speed limit on all Evanston streets, unless posted otherwise.

That motion failed 5-4, however.