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Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Gerald Garner.
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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Halbrook Lane.
To the chagrin of City Councilman Gerald Garner, chicanes will be among the tools used to deter cut-through traffic on Halbrook Lane and Arundel Drive in Mountain Brook.
The Mountain Brook City Council in late May approved a series of measures — including speed humps and chicanes, which narrow the street and create curves to slow drivers — to address resident concerns about motorists using the two streets to avoid other thoroughfares that were designed for more traffic.
Residents originally asked the city to vacate the streets, making them private in order to stop motorists from cutting through.
“There is no great answer at all,” Council President Virginia Smith said. “If we go through the process of closing the road, we think we’re going to have opposition. The only way to justify [that] the road should be closed is to go through this process to reduce traffic through alternate means.”
Mayor Stewart Welch III said city leaders have received a number of emails from Vestavia Hills residents that mentioned litigation in response to closing Halbrook. He said legal action could also be taken by the federal government on behalf of the post office in that area.
“We need to go through this process so if we do get into litigation, we will have done everything we could short of closing the road,” Welch said.
Garner said he couldn’t vote yes on the complete plan if it included chicanes.
“I just can’t fathom putting two nearly 50-foot-long plastic dividers in front of residents’ houses,” he said. “I’ll trade speed humps for chicanes all day long, but I just can’t do that.”
Traffic engineer Richard Caudle said speed humps should be installed in June, adding that there is a 60-day delay on getting the materials for the chicanes. Public Works Director Ronnie Vaughn said the chicanes could cost from $15,000 to $20,000 and the speed humps could cost from $30,000 to $35,000.
The council also passed a resolution supporting an application for Transportation Alternative Program (TAP) funding for sidewalks. While residents along Old Leeds Lane lobbied for the funds be used for sidewalks on their street, the panel opted to honor a previous commitment to install sidewalks on Brookwood Road.
In other action, the council:
- Appointed Cleo Kathryn Gorman to a full term on the Villages Design Review Committee. She was appointed to fill an unexpired term in March.
- Accepted a bid of $407,129 from CB&A Construction for the sidewalk extension on North Woodridge Road from Robin Drive to Locksley Drive. There were six bidders for the project.
- Agreed to a transfer of a right-of-way agreement with the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) for the roundabout project.
- Ratified an agreement between the city and Lower Brothers Tennis Courts for resurfacing the tennis courts at Mountain Brook High School.
- Agreed to change out the scoreboards at the athletic complex, reverting to the scoreboards that were replaced a few years ago. Mountain Brook Athletics wants wireless controls for the scoreboard, which are only available on the previously used Coca-Cola scoreboards.
“Coke, as part of their contract, is going to do all the work and pay for the new scoreboards and the wireless part,” Parks Director Shanda Williams said. “We just need to agree to let them swap them out.
“The new ones we got are inferior to the old ones we had,” she said, adding that the soon-to-be replaced scoreboards will be declared surplus items and made available for auction.
- Authorized an agreement between Mountain Brook and Homewood for the bilateral lending of fire trucks and other firefighting equipment during emergencies and disasters.
Deputy Fire Chief Stacey Cole said the Mountain Brook department is having issues with the supply chain, which can yield issues repairing a fire truck.
“We got down to our last fire truck,” he said. “We have two reserve pumpers and one reserve aerial apparatus. We got down to the last one that we had available.
“We're like, if we needed a truck, we don't have an agreement already with any of the cities near us,'” Cole said. “We reached out to Homewood, and they entered into an agreement with us that if we needed their truck or vice versa, that we've got an agreement in place that we could actually go over to Homewood or Homewood could come over to us and borrow one of our reserve trucks so that they can provide services.”
