By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
Traffic along Edmond Road in front of the high school has been a chronic problem for residents and now it’s been made worse by construction
The complaint came from Amy Arehart who appeared at a Piedmont City Council meeting Monday.
Arehart addressed the council about the traffic along Edmond Road that leads to the Golden Hills housing addition.
“We addressed the planning and zoning two years ago for the road, the fact that emergency vehicles and crews can’t get to us at certain times of the day and the school days, it’s even worse now that the high school is torn up and half the loop is gone,”Arehart said. “There’s parents parked everywhere. You can’t get down Edmond Road to our street.”
After the meeting Arehart said she contacted her school board member who told her the traffic is a city issue.
Councilman John Brown said Wednesday that he and other council members have tried to come to an agreement with the school district administration to address the danger on both Edmond and Piedmont Road.
“We paid for either a $35,000 or $50,000 traffic study and presented it to the school. That study gave them all the solutions and they still wouldn’t do it. That was last year. It addressed all those issues and they wouldn’t even talk to us about it. They’re leaving us no choice but to pass an ordinance to keep all their traffic on their property. We would gladly participate with them and work out some sort of financial deal to pay for some things and they don’t even want to talk about it,” Brown said.
The traffic congestion, he said, leaves the city and the school open for a lawsuit.
“We had a high-speed chase recently down Piedmont Road. Somebody could have stepped out and got killed. It’s a state highway. You can’t park on a state highway,” he said.
The funding for roads has long been an issue and that area is no exception. Brown said he regularly receives complaints from citizens about the congestion.
“The school is the one with all the money,” he said. “They just got an $80 million bond issue and we don’t even have $1 million to throw at school traffic problems.”
