Acacia residents take issue with speed limit, ADOT

 

Neighbors in a residential area say their quality of life has been disturbed and their road safety is at risk thanks to a speed limit increase on a busy state route.

Greg Swindall, his wife Carol and their friend Roger Tull are Acacia Crossings residents with a bone to pick with the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Their neighborhood borders SR 238 and, for the past six months, their friends and they have noticed an increase in traffic noise and speed.

The culprit?

ADOT increased the speed limit on the highway from 40 mph to 50 mph next to the subdivision in August, and neighbors complain large trucks and other traffic drive well over the new speed limit.

“The real problem is when diesel trucks come into town and they’re engine breaking,” Greg Swindall said. “They’re down-shifting and some of those engines are really, really loud.”

Tull, vice president for the neighborhood HOA board, said residents make regular complaints during meetings against the loud, rumbling noise braking diesel trucks make when approaching John Wayne Parkway.

Carol Swindall was visiting her neighbor one morning and heard a big rig brake just outside the subdivision.

“I about jumped out of my seat. It was so loud,” she said.

But the noise increase isn’t the only issue. Residents say safety is a concern too.

Traffic heading east and west is traveling around 10 mph over the new limits, neighbors estimate, and it’s making access out of their neighborhood more difficult and dangerous.

“Now when they come in town they’re doing 60 to 65 mph, and when you’re turning out of Roosevelt and you’re not used to those trucks being on top of you in a heartbeat, we have pulled out and really had to speed up because you don’t realize how fast those trucks are going,” Greg Swindall said.

Residents expressed their concerns with ADOT online and by telephone, but ADOT redirects their concerns to local authorities or within their own engineering department. The Swindalls said follow-up is non-existent.

“I just don’t understand the rationale of why they did it,” Greg Swindall said. “Why would you increase the speed right behind a residential area?”

ADOT spokesman Tom Herrmann said the reason behind the increase is department staff observed traffic in the area driving faster than the previously posted speed limits.

Herrmann said most of the speed limits in the ADOT-managed stretch of SR 238 were generally 55 mph.

The observation led to a speed study.

“Following the ‘Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices’ from the Federal Highway Administration, speed limits are posted to reflect the maximum speed considered safe and reasonable by the majority of drivers,” Herrmann said.

The majority of drivers defined by ADOT is the speed driven at or below by 85 percent of drivers.

West of Acacia Crossings, the study led ADOT to increase its portion of the roadway from 55 mph to 60 mph.

But residents in the subdivision experienced what they view as a substantial 10 mph increase just outside their neighborhood and would like to see it changed back.

“We aren’t asking a whole lot. Just put it back the way it was,” Greg Swindall said.

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This story appears in the March issue of InMaricopa.