By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Speeding on North Columbia Street, handicapped and 15-minute downtown parking and US 30 high-speed enforcement all got touched on during a relatively short Warsaw Traffic Commission Wednesday, Sept. 4.

Under new business, Warsaw Police Department Capt. Joel Beam said the city has a nice website and on there is an option for people to ask questions, make a complaint or both.

“We frequently get requests to have handicapped spots, 15-minute parking spots downtown,” he said.

The police and planning departments and the mayor are all working on the parking committee to see what can be done downtown, “how we can fix parking enforcement, how we can make it more user-friendly for our neighbors. So that is in process,” Beam said.

The city had two requests recently for 15-minute parking spots and one request for a handicapped parking spot.

“Now, as a city, we want to be welcoming and helpful to those who need a handicapped spot. So we are taking a look at that,” Beam stated.

Later in the meeting, Traffic Administrator Lance Grubbs said Terry Sweeney, Main Street Warsaw development director, is leading the downtown parking committee. Beam said Sweeney is working with them because the committee wants to get his insight on what he sees.

City Planner Justin Taylor said, “I think it’s kind of a holistic approach to downtown. We really want to look at what would work best for the businesses and the citizens downtown, and employees of the businesses downtown. So there’s a lot of facets to it. We probably won’t make everybody happy once we implement some changes, but we definitely want to keep everybody in the conversation, so we’ll probably have some updates for the Traffic Commission as we go.”

He continued that they’re looking at a high-tech solution for parking enforcement so tickets would be able to be issued within real time and they’d be able to provide parking passes. “A lot of things that would help people who live downtown as well, just be able to purchase the space that they needed to on street through those passes,” Taylor said.

The committee can also look at handicapped-accessible and 15-minute parking and enforcement of that parking with a high-tech solution.

There are 19 total ADA parking spaces downtown, including on-street and off-street municipal parking lots, according to information Taylor provided after the meeting.

Beam said they’re seeing more and more restaurants where people just want to run in and out to pick up their orders and that’ll change the type of parking needed as different businesses come in.

Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins said after a 15-minute parking spot got moved near the intersection of Buffalo and Market streets, she’s seen a lot of people utilize it to run into businesses to pick something up.

Transitioning to another complaint he received, Beam said it had to do with speeding on North Columbia Street, which is just northwest of the county jail.

“The person that called in wanted to have a speed limit sign. A speed limit sign is not that big of a deal, but if you’re complaining of vehicles speeding and we put up a 30 mph speed sign up, because that’s what it is, people think that they have to go 30 miles per hour,” he said.

Beam put out a speed board for a week on North Columbia Street. Every day during that time, 663 cars went northbound on North Columbia. “So double that, you’re looking at 1,200 cars per neighborhood, that’s pretty significant.”

The average speed was 21.06 mph, with the 85th percentile speed being 27.12 mph. So on the road where the speed limit is 30 mph, the average speed was 21, Beam pointed out.

“Interesting, our fastest speed was 55,” Beam said, noting he will contact the person who had concerns about speeding on Columbia Street. “… I guess my point is, when you come and have a complaint, have a concern, have a question, the city wants to help. The city wants to look into it, hopefully fix the problem if there actually is a problem. I wish some of our streets in Warsaw, the cars would go 10 mph under the speed limit.”

At the Aug. 7 Traffic Commission meeting, Beam displayed a stack of speeding tickets for the month of July alone from blitzes the WPD conducted. Of the nearly 500 tickets, a majority of them were for speeders on U.S. 30 in the city.

“So that grant is a Vehicle High-Speed Enforcement Team grant,” Beam said of the grant that paid for the speed enforcement blitzes. “We went out yesterday and we hit US 30. We had six officers and some worked four, and some worked five hours. We stopped and cited 93 cars, three of which were semis. All for speeding.”

He explained he had an officer sit alongside the road and clock cars, writing down the speeds.

“We had several that were over 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, and these are all in a 45 mph zone in the city of Warsaw,” Beam said as he projected the officer’s notes onto a screen showing the vehicles’ speeds. “Lots over 15 (mph over the speed limit). The average was, I think, 17 mph over the speed limit, with the fastest that was 23 mph over the speed limit.”

Beam said they’re not finished with the grant yet, so they might be out on US 30 tomorrow, today or whenever, looking for speeders.

Warsaw Community Schools Transportation Director Mark Fick asked, with the grant for the speeding, if the police monitor vehicles that run red lights, too.

Beam said if they see someone run a red light they obviously will stop them, but the grant is for speeding specifically.

Traffic Commission member Jason Brown asked how the grant worked and is paid per ticket that is given out.

“No,” Beam said. “It’s paid by hourly rate. So, they give us X number of dollars that we can spend around here. And there’s no quota. A lot of people think we have a quota. Obviously, we want to see tickets because that proves that we worked and we did the job. I can guarantee that warning tickets don’t slow people down.”

Connie Fribley, traffic commission member, asked how far of an area do they cover.

“So, we have done this grant probably within 2 miles out, both sides. So, at the last of July we were doing vehicles that were coming into the city of Warsaw on both sides. This time, we just did within the city of Warsaw because it’s going to slow the cars down when they come into our county,” Beam said.

In one last piece of business, Public Works and Street Superintendent Dustin Dillon reported September is very busy for his department for road work and construction.

They’re finishing up the paving for the Community Crossings Matching Grant project on Frontage Road and Lake Village Lane, by Thursday, Sept. 5, schedule permitting. Pavement markings and such should finish up the project next week.

North Lincoln Street is moving right along, Dillon said. “That’s whole reconstruction on the curbs, gutters, sidewalks, updated storm sewers. So, a big project going on out there.”

It’s scheduled to be finished in November, and it’s moving right along with minimal hiccups, he said.

“We will be milling and paving Corridor Drive starting next week, starting Monday, and South Columbia Street as well,” he said.