City lowers speed limit on four streets

Oct. 5—LENOIR — Motorists will soon notice speed limit reductions on four Lenoir streets.

A public hearing was held during the Lenoir City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 4 to consider adopting a 20 miles per hour speed limit for the entire lengths of Pennwood Street NE, Glenview Street NE, Circle Drive NE, and Ridgecrest Drive NE.

"This is in the Lower Creek section of Lenoir," said Lenoir Mayor Joe Gibbons. "There have been some issues of all kinds of things coming through there, trucks and all that. We've done a number of things, our public works department and our fire and police, everyone has done a great job of working toward that. Sometimes it's hard to control that all the time. This hopefully will help the situation if this is what we decide to do."

As a result of citizen requests, the Lenoir Police Department traffic team, headed by Sgt. Chris Bumgarner, conducted a study of these aforementioned streets in regards to speeding and traffic concerns. Currently, the speed for these streets is not posted or listed in the city ordinance, which means they default to 35 mph. However, the traffic team determined that 35 mph is too fast for these residential streets and request 20 mph speed limits be adopted instead with signage posted.

Based on the traffic team report, as neither Pennwood Street nor Glenview Street have an average daily vehicle count of greater than 500 vehicles, neither streets qualify for multi-way stops or speed humps/tables in accordance with traffic-calming guidelines.

Rumble strips were previously installed by the city of Lenoir at the intersection of Glenview Street and Pennwood Street. Due to wear and tear, the strips are becoming ineffective. Bumgarner recommended replacing the rumble strips at this intersection to encourage drivers to slow and come to a complete stop at the intersection.

"It is my recommendation that as call volume allows, officers of the Lenoir Police Department continue to have a visible presence in this residential neighborhood in an effort to address citizen concerns regarding motor vehicles," wrote Bumgarner in his report.

This ordinance shall become effective when the signs giving notice of the authorized speed limit are erected.

"This is a good change for that area," said Councilman Jonathan Beal. "The streets are very narrow compared to a lot of other streets in the city because it's a very old section, there's some tight turns and tight curves. This should really help that neighborhood in multiple ways."

As no one from the community spoke during the public hearing, city council voted unanimously to approve the amendment to the Lenoir City Code to allow for 20 mph speed limits in that section of the city.

In other news, city council approved the adoption of the Capital Project Budget Ordinance for the EPA Brownfields Grant #2 Project in the amount of $500,000. Moreover, council voted unanimously to approve a budget amendment for the Building Reuse Grant for Exela Pharma Sciences, LLC in the amount of $500,000. The grant application was authorized on March 2, 2021.