Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Traffic around high school has neighbors angry

A series of meetings is called with county traffic planners to address residents' safety concerns.

Nothing, says Peggy Olson, has been able to curtail the number of high school students driving down her street.

Not even the sight of her husband's police cruiser.

"They don't care," says Olson. "They're talking on their cell phones, smoking cigarettes, leaning over, and they almost hit kids. Several older people have told me they've almost been hit."

Olson says she sees up to 100 cars race through her Valrico neighborhood - south of Bloomingdale Avenue near Lithia Pinecrest Road - each morning before classes begin at Bloomingdale High School.

Neighborhood traffic and speeding has rankled residents for more than a year, but after months of complaints, the county is doing something about it. Hillsborough County is holding three traffic calming meetings within a week to address residents' safety concerns.

The first public meeting, involving residents of Bloomingdale Oaks, was to have been held Thursday night at Alafia Elementary School. Two more meetings will be held there on Monday and Tuesday for Cade and Graywood residents, respectively. A meeting for Kyle residents is tentatively set for Oct. 9.

The problem, according to complaints registered with the county, is that Bloomingdale High students driving east on Bloomingdale Avenue cut through the neighborhood to avoid waiting in the left turn lane for entry to the school.

Instead, they circumvent that left turn by turning right onto Bloomingdale Oaks Drive, left onto Graywood or Kyle courts, and left again onto Cade Lane, which runs straight across Bloomingdale Avenue into the school.

"They add more volume to people trying to get out and go to work," Olson said. "There's mornings where there's probably 20, 25 cars waiting at that red light."

Other residents are concerned about how fast those cars swing through the neighborhood.

"They just zoom through here," said Kathryn Fowke, who lives on Graywood Court. "You can hear them - it sounds like a raceway in the morning."

Olson, who lives on Kyle Court, petitioned the county for the traffic calming meetings, at which she and other residents will discuss the possibility of such measures as speed humps.

Another option would be to restrict turns on Bloomingdale during certain morning hours.

That plan would surely anger some neighborhood residents, but Olson says speed humps might encounter more resistance.

"The county's not out here to sell anybody speed humps," said Wayne Kirby, general manager of the county's Residential Traffic Calming Program. "We have to get a formal request on that for us to take a look."

- Jay Cridlin can be reached at 661-2442 or cridlin@sptimes.com

A meeting about traffic calming will be held for residents of Cade Lane at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Alafia Elementary School cafeteria, 3535 Culbreath Drive. A meeting for residents of Graywood Court is set for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 30 at Alafia Elementary. For more information, call 272-5275.