Chapel Hill Debates Weaver Dairy Extension Speed Limit

After receiving a petition from an advisory board, the town council considered raising the speed limit on Weaver Dairy Road Extension from 25 miles per hour to 35. The Chapel Hill Town Council ultimately chose not to raise the speed limit, due to a number of citizens who expressed concerns about pedestrian safety.

“There are a lot of pedestrians who walk around this area of Weaver Dairy,” said Kali Xu. “Raising the speed limit from 25 to 35 greatly increases the risk to pedestrians.”

Traffic engineer Kumar Nappalli said the town originally designed the road to have a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit

“The average speed is 33.5 miles per hour, the 50th percentile speed is 34 miles per hour,” he said. “What it means is 50 percent of the vehicles are going 34 or higher on that street.”

But the issue of raising the speed limit on Weaver Dairy Extension is not a new one.

Councilwoman Donna Bell said this is her seventh year on the council and this is the third time she has addressed the issue.

“One of the reasons we keep having this conversation is we don’t say what happens,” she said. “Our traffic engineer says the road is engineered for speed limit of 35 miles per hour, which would support the idea of raising the speed limit, but there is strong dissent from the neighbors and thus we don’t raise the speed limit.”

Bell suggested the council write down why they voted against raising the speed limit in an attempt to prevent the issue coming up again.

“That we do give a strong explaination as to why we’re not doing this,” she said. “So the next time this comes up there will be a basis for having the conversation, as opposed to an assumption that this is a new issue.”

The council approved Bell’s motion and included an explanation for why they chose not to raise the speed limit.

Nappalli said the town would work with the neighborhoods to help mitigate the speeding issues on the road.