CENTRAL SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — Five people have died on North Nevada Avenue in the past 5 years, and residents of the Old North End neighborhood say temporarily installed speed feedback signs are welcome, but not a long term solution to their street safety concerns.
Speed feedback signs are planned to be installed through the city's Safe Streets COS initiative as part of a demonstration project aimed at slowing drivers down. But neighbors say the stretch of road has been dangerous for far too long.
Peter Frantz, a member of the Old North End Neighborhood Street Safety Committee, has watched the consequences of speeding play out in front of his own home.
"I think we have something unusual here because of the severity of the problem," Frantz said.
Frantz described one crash that has stayed with him.
"About 3 years or 3.5 years maybe ago,I was asleep, I heard a speeding car hit an object and it's a sound that we all get familiar with. You'd think of a car crash, sounds like a jumble of crashing, but oftentimes it's just a 'pow'! A car struck that tree there and killed a young woman," Frantz said.
The tree still bears the mark of that crash — a section of bark stripped away on impact.
"There was nothing we could do," Frantz said.
Frantz says many of his neighbors have experienced close calls of their own. Some have planted signs in their yards that say, 'someone died here'. A binder compiled by residents holds more than 50 testimonials documenting their experiences on the street.
"Every resident of Nevada has anecdotes to tell," Frantz said.
Frantz said the speed feedback sign is a welcome step, but its reach is limited on a corridor that spans 14 blocks.
"We're grateful for any any speed mitigation measures that the city can help us with. We don't think they have much of an effect on the vast majority of the neighborhood," Frantz said,
"The most we can do, try to convince the city to implement conventional safety measures."
The long-term solution Frantz and his neighbors are pushing for is a lane reduction — converting North Nevada Avenue to a single lane, similar to what was done on Cascade Avenue.
"It's a triumph of public safety," Frantz said.
It is a change Frantz has been advocating for over more than a decade, with the backing of multiple professional traffic studies.
"14 years to try to implement that plan and over the course of that time, the city has conducted 5 studies. Professional traffic engineers, every single one of them has made the same recommendation as the first to do this lane modification. So we have been pushing for that continuously," Frantz said.
