UPDATE: The original version of this story was published on Nov. 11, 2023. Public records requests LINK nky made for this story had not come in by the time of the article’s initial publication, but relevant lines were updated upon the records’ receipt. This current version reflects those changes.–LINK nky editorial, Nov. 15, 2023.
An accident early Tuesday morning involving a semitrailer in the Cherry Hill neighborhood, which straddles the border between the city of Erlanger in Kenton County and unincorporated Boone County, has revived concerns among local residents about traffic in their neighborhood.
“It’s an everyday process with us, semi trucks coming through our neighborhood,” said Eric Sandman, a Cherry Hill resident on the Boone County side.
The accident occurred around 5 a.m. Tuesday morning. Three power cable poles were destroyed, which showered the surrounding area with wires and hazardous material. Four cars were damaged in the accident, according to police records.
The downed poles also killed both electricity and internet services in the surrounding areas. Sandman said that his internet service didn’t return until Wednesday morning.
Residents who witnessed the accident photographed a semitrailer emblazoned with the logo Stevens Transport, a logistics company based out of Dallas. The report from the Boone County Sheriff’s office indicated the driver was Kenneth Johnson, a 68-year-old Huston resident. LINK nky contacted Stevens Transport for comment, but they did not respond on the record by the time of this article’s publication.
Accidents of this kind in Cherry Hill aren’t new, residents said, and statements from residents as well as city and county leaders indicate that people in the neighborhood are frustrated and anxious.
Julie Estep, an Erlanger resident who’s lived in the neighborhood for about 20 years, said that the inciting incident for her came about four or five years ago.
“We were waiting for the school bus for my middle schooler at the time,” Estep said, “and a semi-truck came to the neighborhood, early morning, ran over a stop sign, didn’t stop, went through someone’s yard, went through two other yards. So I watched this as I was thinking, OK, kids can get hurt because they didn’t even stop to see what that was that they hit.”
Duke Energy confirmed that pole destruction was an ongoing problem. A representative for the company said that four accidents involving semis have led to damaged equipment since September 2022.
“On average, it costs between $4,000 – $8,000 and can take a minimum of 4 hours to replace a pole,” the Duke Energy representative told LINK nky.
Most of the people who spoke with LINK nky said they suspect the accidents are the result of trucks being routed through the neighborhood by GPS navigation systems. Johnson, the truck’s driver, admitted that his GPS navigation program had directed him into the neighborhood in the police report.
Many of the trucks, such as the Stevens Transport truck involved in Tuesday’s accident, appear to be third-party contractors working for nearby businesses, such as Perfetti Van Melle and Levi Strauss. If this is the case, the drivers are likely unfamiliar with the region.
Erlanger Mayor Jessica Fette said that some of the drivers may have never even been to the region, and their work may never bring them back, hence their reliance on GPS.
“Erlnnger Police Chief [Kyle] Rader stated that if he even finds these individuals, it doesn’t make any difference because they don’t come back to the city to pay the ticket,” Estep said.
The good news, Fette and Rader said, is that the number of accidents has been trending down overall. Data from public records indicate that there were 23 calls about semis in the neighborhood on the Erlanger side in 2021 and 10 calls in 2022. This downward trend made Tuesday’s accident all the more painful.
“We really haven’t had any major accidents or incidents in the past nine months,” said Erlanger Council Member Jennifer Jasper-Lucas, who also sits on the city’s Cherry Hill semi truck task force.
Erlanger’s task force was established following residents’ agitation. Jasper-Lucas said that the task force would monitor calls on a month-to-month basis. The group last met in February, Jasper-Lucas said, because at that point they were “only getting maybe two calls a month,” but the ostensible uptick, she said, was likely due to construction projects along Donaldson and Huston Roads, where the neighborhood’s entrances are.
Boone County Engineer Franxman was less confident about the construction’s role, but both Erlanger and Boone County have put signs and traffic delineators along their respective entrances to the neighborhood in an effort to prevent trucks from entering. Jasper-Lucas said that the task force in Erlanger had also worked to update GPS systems to instruct drivers to avoid the area.
The truck in Tuesday’s accident entered the neighborhood on the Boone County side from Donaldson road and headed down Queensway Drive, where the county had already set up traffic delineators and signs.
There are other ways trucks can still enter the neighborhood, as well.
“The trucks are coming off of Turfway,” Sandman said. “There’s a little side road coming up off of turf way through the apartment complex, and that’s where we see them coming through most of the time.”
Moreover, the area is complex from a jurisdictional standpoint since the county line bisects the neighborhood, and the state administers the adjacent roads. The nearby construction projects are all state projects, slated for completion in September 2025, according to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, meaning that both Erlanger and Boone County’s direct power over the problem is limited.
“I don’t know that there’s anything additional we could do at this point,” Jasper-Lucas said, a sentiment Fette and Rader echoed.
“We’ve reached out to council members before, and finally they responded one time saying we need to quit kind of bashing them on social media because it’s being addressed,” Sandman said. “Well, I get it, but we’re the ones that live back there, and we’re the ones that have to experience this every day. It’s affecting our lives–we’re missing work, missing pay, [we have] damages to our vehicles, our property, and it’s just starting to become frustrating.”