Council upholds higher speed limit on Seven Hills Drive

By Jeremy Twitchell

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 | 2:33 p.m.

The Henderson City Council this week unanimously upheld a citizen advisory committee’s decision to increase the speed limit on a portion of Seven Hills Drive from 25 to 30 mph.

On June 18, the volunteer Citizens’ Traffic Advisory Board voted 3-2 to raise the speed limit. The vote came after a resident asked Henderson to look into raising the speed limit and an investigation by city traffic engineers determined that a raise was warranted.

The new speed limit applies to Seven Hills Drive south of Sunridge Heights Parkway, including the Seven Hills loop.

Henderson Traffic Engineer John Penuelas said his staff studied traffic patterns on the roadway and found that more than half of drivers were going 33 mph or higher. The 85th percentile — a figure frequently used in setting speed limits that finds the speed that divides the fastest 15 percent of drivers from the remaining 85 percent — was 39 mph, Penuelas said.

“That is almost the definition of a speeding problem,” he said.

Penuelas said artificially low speed limits can become a safety risk of their own, and after re-evaluating Seven Hills and determining that the road was designed for a 35 mph speed limit, he and his staff recommended raising the speed limit.

He said they decided on 30 mph as a compromise with residents who said they didn’t want the limit increased.

The Seven Hills Master Homeowners Association, aware of resident concerns about the increased speed limit, appealed the advisory board’s decision to the City Council. In the appeal letter, board members wrote that they had no position on the increase, but wanted to give residents an opportunity to express their opinions to the City Council.

Four residents spoke at the City Council hearing; one against the increase, two in support and one who was neutral who wanted to make sure the city would bear the costs of replacing any signs and making any landscaping changes that would need to be made to increase sight distances.

City Councilwoman Debra March, who lives in Seven Hills, said she agreed with the increase and called the 30 mph standard a “healthy compromise.”

“Right now, you’re required to ride your break down the hill in order to stay under the speed limit,” March said.

Penuelas said his evaluation of Seven Hills Drive looked at several factors, including crash histories. In the past three years, he said, Seven Hills has been the site of 38 crashes, of which 10 involved personal injury and one involved a fatality. The fatality, he said, was an intoxicated driver who was driving 70 mph, he said.

The crash rate was well below what is considered safe for a road of Seven Hills’ size, he said.

“If I or anyone on my staff thought for one minute that increasing the speed on this roadway to 30 miles per hour would endanger anybody in any way … then we would not do it,” Penuelas said.

Mayor Andy Hafen said he was convinced by the evidence that traffic engineers collected.

“I think this is more of a matter of science and planning and traffic engineering — not a matter of preference whether you want to go 25, 30, 35 or 40,” he said.