Monterey is considering making Crain Street a one-way street in an attempt to reduce speeding.
The Monterey Street Committee recently met to discuss how to best address the speeding issue. Street Committee Chairman Larry Bennett said speeding is a big issue on Crain Street as the road is narrow. Making it one-way could eliminate the danger of cars trying to pass each other.
“We are going to see how that works,” Bennett said. “I don’t know if, you know, the residents over there will like that idea or not, but until we can come up with an idea how to widen the road, of course, it takes a lot of money to do stuff like that. Widening the road would be the best idea, but I don’t think we have the funds at this moment to do that.”
Bennett said the committee also highly considered installing speed bumps on Crain Street. Bennett said after exploring speed bumps, the committee concluded that speed bumps are not a good idea.
“In the wintertime up here on the mountain, we have a lot of ice, snow, and the scrapers and things, snow plows, come by, and they would be damaging these speed bumps that would be placed in the street,” Bennett said. “So I don’t think that would work out too well, and so we just decided not to do that.”
Bennett said the town has made previous attempts to reduce speeding by having the police department run radar on the street. Bennett said addressing the speeding issue on Crain Street is something the town needs to address.
“I’m the kind of person if someone comes to me, calls me, or whatever, or comes to the board and makes a complaint, you know, a legit complaint, and they make their case to me and the board that it’s a major concern that needs to be looked into, I believe we need to take action on it and not wait till something happens,” Bennett said. “It could be bad, you know, if anything is unsafe, especially, I think we need to look into it immediately and try to get something done as soon as possible.”
Bennett said the street committee will send its recommendation to the town’s Board of Aldermen. Bennett said the town is all ears on possible ideas to address the speeding on Crain Street.
