The city of Erlanger has decided not to close the former Erlanger Road, renamed Sycamore Tree Lane, for now.
“We are not closing the road right now,” Mayor Jessica Fette said at the city council meeting last Tuesday night. “But I do want to let you know that in the fall, when they are making the improvements to Houston, north going up into the Showcase Cinema property, that road will be closed for a period of time. They will be widening that road and putting sidewalks on both sides. And what we want to be able to do is use that as a test, and see how it works.”
The road in question has been a problem for a long time. Though not a through road, Apple and Google maps often take truckers onto Sycamore Tree, which wasn’t designed to handle their size or weight.
The end result is that once the trucks realize their mistake, they can’t get out of the street without tearing up yards and land, sometimes getting stuck and requiring help to get out of the area. The trucks are also taking a toll on the life of the small bridge in the area.
Residents have been contacting the city and asking for help. Mayor and council discussed closing the street because no other steps they have taken have discouraged the trucks. The city held a resident meeting in late April at the base of the street that several residents attended.
The city found out at that meeting that some of the residents did not want the street to be closed, so now they are looking at more options, but frustration was evident as Fette spoke at last week’s council meeting.
Three residents of Sycamore Tree Lane came to the meeting to protest the closing of the road.
Marietta Echlin lives on the street, having bought the house so her husband could work on restoring classic and antique cars. She displayed a map she drew showing where people lived and color coordinating it to show where people who have disabilities or are elderly live. She told council the official count of 300 cars that used the street between April 1 and April 30, is wrong; in fact, she argued, the count is off by over 7,000.
“We want to minimize our problems and accessibility, for sure,” she stated. “We don’t want a park. I think that money could be better spent.”
At the resident meeting, future plans for a park behind the subdivision were mentioned, and some residents connected the two projects, even though they are totally unrelated. The park project is in the distant future.
Glenda Cartwell also lives on the street, and she, too, challenged the official car count of 300, saying she and her daughter come and go six times a day. She provided a police report of cars that traveled on the road from April 1 through 30 and it showed 7,958 cars.
Cartwell said that she sent an email to all councilmembers concerning the car count and received a response back from one of the members.
“‘If we think the traffic count is 300, and the actual count is 26 times that, we would be doing a huge disservice to the community by shutting down the road,'” she read from the response. She did not identify the councilmember.
Brittney Nevins lives on the street. She said that her husband has a work truck, as do two others on the street, and they all go down the street on their way to work. Closing the street would mean that they will have to go up the street to get out to work, and on days when the street is icy Nevins didn’t know if her husband would make it to work.
Fette said the city is still collecting data and trying to understand the entire situation. She enumerated the measures that the city has taken to keep the trucks off the road.
“Today another truck went in and destroyed the boulder and left the boulder in the middle of the road,” Fette explained. “And that’s after yesterday, a truck ran over the boulder, and got the boulder stuck in its axel. It is an issue, and it is a constant issue, and we are still trying to understand, what can we do?”
She related how the city has put up dozens of signs, boulders, redirected traffic, contacted Google and Apple maps, changed the name of the street, changed the turning radius, and nothing seems to make the truck drivers stop using the road.
“I understand the frustration,” Fette said to residents. “I understand that it’s not what we want to happen, and to be honest with you, it’s not what I want to do, and it’s going to be the absolute last resort after we have tried every other thing to make this stop. Because we hear you, we understand the frustration and the inconvenience. So just know that nothing is happening right now. We are not making any kind of decision now.”
Later in the meeting, Councilman Tyson Hermes said he had discussed the matter with City Attorney Jack Gatlin, Mayor Fette and Police Chief Kyle Rader, and something they came up with was how the City of Independence dealt with truck traffic that destroyed Pelle bridge. That city used fines that increased exponentially for the trucks. Hermes explained that the city was able to devote an officer to that specific area for a solid month to be able to cite the truckers, and he wasn’t sure Erlanger could do that.
Councilman Tom Cahill also said that the bridge on Erlanger Road is due for an inspection, assessing the life capacity of the bridge after so many trucks have gone over it, and the assessment should occur this year or next, and provide some important information to the city.
Cahill said another factor in this issue is that some of the trucks are going down Queensway, which is another way into the Cherry Hill subdivision, to travel over to the bridge on Erlanger Road, and they are also responsible for damage.
Queensway is in unincorporated Boone County, so Cahill has been in discussion with Boone County Administrator Jeff Earlywine to determine a type of partnership with the county to discourage the trucks from getting into the subdivision. Cahill said the county is planning some improvements on Queensway, too, so there are some possibilities for working together on banning the trucks.
