KENT DRIVE STUDY'S EARLY RESULTS SHOW EXTENSION MAY NOT REDUCE TRAFFIC

Preliminary results of a study of traffic in the Woodland Hills Subdivision north of Lexington Avenue has made at least a few residents of Kent Drive happy.

The results say that much of the traffic on Belleridge Pike is cutting through the subdivision from Perryville Road to Lexington Avenue and that extending Kent Drive would not divert traffic off Belleridge Pike.

The Cape Girardeau City Council ordered the study May 19 after some residents of Kent Drive asked the council to cancel plans to extend their street to connect to Lexington Avenue. The preliminary report is on tonight's agenda.

The council may not take action until the final report is in.

The 170-resident subdivision has three outlets: at Belleridge Pike and Perryville Road, at Belleridge Pike and Lexington Avenue and at Abbey Road and Lexington Avenue. A fourth is under construction that would connect Kenneth Drive with Route W.

Extending Kent Drive would cost an estimated $117,000. On May 19, Kent Drive resident Richard Burns handed in a petition signed by 22 residents of Kent Drive asking the city to cancel plans for the extension.

The extension of Kent Drive has been in the city's plans since August 1990, when 170 residents of the subdivision signed a petition asking for it.

At the time, the intersection of Belleridge Pike and Perryville Road was the only outlet for the subdivision, and Lexington Avenue was still on the drawing board.

Residents of Belleridge Pike came to the meeting a month ago to ask for the extension to go ahead. They said the traffic on Belleridge Pike is too heavy for a residential street, and opening Kent Drive would divert some traffic away from their street.

Since then, the city has set out air hoses on streets in the subdivision, looked up records of accidents in the area and sent Thomas Wiesner, a technician in the engineering department, to make observations of traffic.

Wiesner noted that there has been one injury accident in the subdivision since at least 1990, and that no accidents involved pedestrians or bicycles.

He said more traffic passes through the subdivision than a traffic engineer would expect from the number of homes there.

That observation and the configuration of the streets led Wiesner to believe that most of the excess volume can be attributed to motorists coming from north of the subdivision to Kingshighway who use Belleridge Pike as a shortcut from Perryville Road to Lexington Drive. With Kent Drive open, motorist would still use Belleridge Pike, Wiesner said.

Sensors indicate that more than 85 percent of motorists using Belleridge Pike comply with the 30 mph speed limit, Wiesner said.

Burns has hailed the results of the preliminary report because, he said, it shows there is "no clear reason for an estimated $112,000 extension other than to help us get to Lexington Avenue a little quicker."

Belleridge Pike resident David Westrich said, "There are other issues as far as access to fire protection and police that are equally important."

In addition, he said the city has promised Woodland Hills residents the Kent Drive extension for years, and that Kent Drive is positioned so that it could connect to planned subdivisions to the north that would otherwise pour more traffic onto Belleridge Pike.

Wiesner cautions that the report is only preliminary. The hoses are still in the subdivision, gathering more complete data about traffic patterns. He said two of the air hoses are equipped to record what time the traffic passes and could give more clues as to the where all the traffic is coming from.