Some Alberts Hill Road area residents are asking that the Police Commission reduce the number of traffic signs that have been recently installed there by the state Department of Transportation (DOT).

Two residents spoke on the topic at an October 2 Police Commission meeting. The commission serves as the local traffic authority.

John Glaberson of Valley Field Road North told commission members that Alberts Hill Road simply has too many traffic signs posted on it. The state recently installed nearly 70 signs there along a 1.2-mile-long section of Alberts Hill Road that lies between Walnut Tree Hill Road and Valley Field Road North.

Mr Glaberson said that people who drive on Alberts Hill Road already know the road sections that are problematic. The rustic street is hilly and curving.

Police Chief James Viadero said police are working with the DOT in seeking to reduce the number of traffic signs there.

“We’re working on it for you,” he told Mr Glaberson.

Alfred Huppenthal of Hearthstone Lane also had an issue with the many presence of so many signs. “What about all these signs?” he asked.

Chief Viadero responded that police have discussed the topic with the DOT, adding that some of the signs will be removed.

Mr Glaberson had raised the sign topic at the September 4 Police Commission meeting. He told commission members then that the many cautionary signs do not prevent motorists from speeding through the area.

The highly visible signs hold a brilliant reflective yellow field that contains bold black symbols. Many of the signs are posted back-to-back so that motorists traveling in both directions can see chevron-based warnings for the same sharp curve in the road from both directions.

In the past, the DOT offered to perform a study of low-volume local roads which lacked sufficient traffic signs and also offered to install such signs. The state used federal grant money for the project.

Toddy Hill Road

In other business at the October 2 session, Pete Sepe of 83 Toddy Hill Road asked the Police Commission how it plans to enforce the traffic laws in that area during the coming winter season. During warm weather, the town keeps a large portable electronic speed display posted on Toddy Hill Road, which indicates the speed of oncoming vehicles compared to the posted speed limit in the area, as a way to deter speeding. To prevent the display from being damaged, however, it is not used in the wintertime.

Police patrol officers also have heavily enforced traffic laws in that area.

Mr Sepe told Chief Viadero of two separate incidents in which speeding motorists passed him on Toddy Hill Road in no-passing zones.

The police chief urged Mr Sepe not to try to photograph such offenders but to simply report the incidents to police.

“We’ll keep up the enforcement...We’re still out there doing enforcement,” Chief Viadero said. The town plans to acquire permanent electronic speed displays for the Toddy Hill Road area, but the funds to do so have not yet become available.

Concerned Toddy Hill Road area residents started attending Police Commission meetings in spring 2017, following a serious early morning accident on that street.

In another matter, Police Commission members unanimously approved a motion that sets local standards which conform with federal standards on the center-line striping and restriping of town roads.

After the Public Works Department annually forms a list of roads to be paved and repaved, the department would forward that list to the Police Commission for review and approval of paint striping on those roads.

With the striping standards in place, when the town places center-line paint stripes on a town roadway, they will be dual stripes, not single stripes. In the past, the town reportedly painted single stripes down the center of roads in an effort to limit costs.