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Residents on Eagle Drive lobbying for speed bumps

5 years 7 months 2 weeks ago Thursday, August 30 2018 Aug 30, 2018 August 30, 2018 5:21 PM August 30, 2018 in News
Source: WBRZ

ZACHARY - Some residents living along Eagle Drive in Zachary are asking the city to install speed bumps on their street to prevent speeders from blowing through a stop sign.

There is already a three-way stop in front of John LeBlanc's home and a low-speed limit, but he says it's not enough to keep people from speeding along his street.

"Just blow through here, they don't even slow down at all," he said.

It's not every driver, but LeBlanc says a few of them don't ever stop.

"They're probably doing 50 miles per hour when they're coming through here," he said.

A few years ago, LeBlanc lobbied for the City of Zachary to install the stop signs on his street, to slow down drivers turning off of Hwy 964. He tells 2 On Your Side's Brittany Weiss that the stop signs worked for a while, but now people are ignoring them and getting away with doing so. That's what prompted LeBlanc to raise his voice and request that the city looks into installing speed bumps, in addition to the stop signs.

LeBlanc and a few residents have been attending Zachary City Council meetings for discussion. Zachary Mayor David Amrhein tells WBRZ the city has been looking into LeBlanc's concerns for a couple of weeks now. Thursday morning, a traffic counter was placed on Eagle Drive to collect data. Amrhein says the city should have more data in the next few weeks and plans to present its findings at the next council meeting. He also says the city has been down this road before with another neighborhood. The neighborhood requested speed bumps and they were installed. A few years ago, those bumps were removed after there was a complaint.

Just up the road from LeBlanc is Wanda Rester. She doesn't think the street where her parents live needs speed bumps.

"We don't have speeders that I know of here, maybe 30 miles an hour but the road's not long enough to hardly get up to speed," said Rester.

She's worried the additional slowdown will prolong emergency services from reaching the front door to help her parents, should they need assistance.

"The ambulance comes all the time, now they're going to be slowed down coming over this big hump to get here when sometimes I really need them right now," she said.

LeBlanc, who retired from the Baton Rouge Fire Department after 25 years of service says he drove a fire truck for seven years. He says when he responded to calls speed bumps never slowed him down. He says this decision boils down to safety and what's needed for his neighborhood.

"We got to do something now because if we don't somebody's going to get hurt and somebody's going to get killed," he said.




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