Residents seek safer traffic north of downtown Naperville

Four intersections north of downtown Naperville are the target of calls to improve traffic safety before the new school year begins in August.

Residents along Franklin and Douglas avenues at Eagle and Webster streets say drivers often speed past on their way to Metra trains at the nearby 5th Avenue station, causing safety concerns and two recent crashes.

One of them happened outside of Keith Burton's house at Franklin and Webster, causing him to bring his concerns to the city council last week.

“Commuters race through our neighborhood at high speeds,” Burton said. “I worry about pedestrians and bikers on the streets and about children that walk to school.”

Staff members in the city's transportation, engineering and development department say they've been studying the area since January, after Naperville Unit District 203 made a school attendance decision that will affect student walking patterns. The district voted to send fifth-graders who would have attended Naper Elementary at 39 S. Eagle St. to Washington Junior High at 201 N. Washington St. instead.

The junior high's property backs up to the intersection of Douglas Avenue and Webster Street — at the northwest corner of the area where residents have raised concerns.

There and at the other three intersections now under additional city review, two-way stop signs are posted for east/west traffic on Douglas and Franklin, highlighted by orange flags. But north/south traffic on Webster and Eagle can pass without stopping.

Some say the intersections should be four-way stops.

“Adding more stop signs may not necessarily fix the problem,” council member Kevin Gallaher said.

He called for the city to consider alternate ideas such as making some of the affected streets one-way. Residents said they'd be open to a new traffic pattern if it will provide a safer environment at the four intersections where police say there have been a total of nine crashes in the past five years.

“We need to break driving patterns and behaviors that have built up over time in motorists who use these streets as pass-throughs to Washington and Mill,” Burton said.

Franklin Avenue resident Marie Dickinson teaches music lessons out of her house and says she advises her students to pay extra attention to drivers who may disregard or roll through the east/west stop signs.

“We need your help with solutions that will slow down these drivers and force them to obey stop signs,” Dickinson told the city council.

This isn't the first time the council has heard traffic concerns in this area.

The city studied Webster Street intersections with Franklin and Douglas avenues in April 2014 at the request of former council member David Wentz, who sought four-way stops at the sites near his workplace. But the study found the intersections didn't quite meet national and state standards to require additional traffic control.

With younger students soon to be walking to the junior high in the area, residents say they hope this time, the result will be different.

“While we can ask the city to do more to control these problems and help prevent a serious injury or fatality,” Burton said, “drivers need to be more accountable and responsible for their actions.”