Murrysville council looks at options for slowing Wiestertown Road traffic

With a horse stable down the street, and increasing development at Murrysville Community Park raising the number of cars driving on Wiestertown Road, council members plan to boost the police presence there.

Concerns about drivers speeding on the single-lane rural road near the park aren’t new.

A previous iteration of Murrysville council chose not to pursue two options to try and calm traffic along the road: a study to look into the possibility of a four-way stop at the intersection of Evans, Bollinger and Wiestertown roads; and raised pedestrian crosswalks located roughly at either end of the park’s wetlands area.

“We know there’s speeding on the road, but we’ve only had one near-incident there,” Murrysville Chief Administrator Jim Morrison said, referring to June 1, 2019, when a passing motorist sideswiped a horse that was on the roadside.

Idle Creek Stables is located on Wiestertown at Bollinger Road and, with a trail in the park that can accommodate horses, the road “get used to a fair extent,” Morrison said.

In addition to horses, ongoing development at the park has increased the amount of activity there, along with the number of people crossing Wiestertown Road.

“My concern is not necessarily the horse traffic, but the additional traffic due to all the activities there, mainly sports but also now the splash pad,” Councilman Loren Kase said.

And, while plans to construct an amphitheater have been put on hold, that project will draw additional residents to the park, which spans both sides of Wiestertown Road.

“There’s the splash pad, there’s the dog park,” Kase said. “I feel we should look into it along with increased police enforcement.”

Morrison agreed reinforcing the existing crosswalks was a good first step, along with speed enforcement “during the more popular times of year, and then we can take a look (at other measures) moving forward,” he said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation manual encourages taking other steps prior to traffic-calming measures such as a stop sign or raised crosswalks, Morrison said.

Councilman Mac McKenna suggested using speed bumps, but Morrison said they would likely create a larger problem when public works plow the road in the winter.

Council President Dayne Dice liked the idea of starting with a stronger police presence.

“If we tell the police to do some strict enforcement on that road, and they report back that they’ve ended up issuing a ton of tickets, maybe that suggests we need to look into something like a stop sign or the raised crosswalks,” Dice said. “But if a few people get tickets, word is going to start to spread.”