MUSKEGON, Mich. — A Muskegon man says he's fed up with drivers speeding down his street and endangering his children.
He says he's spent years complaining to the city about the problems plaguing Leonard Avenue to no avail.
This week, he turned to 13 ON YOUR SIDE for answers.
“The speeding and running the intersections… when my daughter rides her bike… what if that car just came out of nowhere,” Steve Baessler questioned.
Baessler confessed that thought was often on his mind.
The speed limit in his residential neighborhood is 25 miles per hour.
In the 12 or so years since Baessler bought his house on Leonard, he said speeding drivers had become just about as predictable as the sun rise.
So common, he installed cameras to keep an eye out. Baessler frequently catches drivers in the act.
“You can hear them coming,” he related. “I'll have to turn around and just throw my hands up, like, you know? They look right at you.”
With no posted speed limits, stop signs or yield signs in sight within several blocks of Baessler’s home to tell drivers otherwise.
He said the lack of signage had caused several accidents over the years.
Wanting to prevent something worse, Baessler said he’d spent the better portion of the last decade trying to convince the city to take action without much to show for it.
“I realize resources are limited but I've offered to come out of pocket for street signs, speed limit signs, yield signs,” he explained. “They told me no, I can't do that.”
“Usually, when I call about the speeding, they'll park a little one of those little speed limit trailers… they'll leave it there for a week, everybody ignores it, because they know that the machine can't write a ticket, and the cops just disappear,” Baessler said. “Rinse and repeat.”
Ironically, as Wednesday’s interview concluded, a Muskegon Department of Public Safety vehicle appeared on Leonard with one of the aforementioned trailers in tow.
Muskegon Public Safety told 13 ON YOUR SIDE the device would be used to gather data on average speeds.
The department said it also had officers posted in the area Wednesday.
“We take complaints directly from citizens if they have concerns about an intersection,” Leo Evans, Muskegon’s director of public works related.
In this case, Evans said his office had never gotten the memo.
“We were not aware of it and we did get that added to our list,” he said.
Evans said he would launch a traffic study after 13 ON YOUR SIDE brought the problem to his attention.
Thanks to a lull in construction projects, he said the ball could get rolling in just about a month.
If the study ultimately recommends improvements, city commissioners would have to give final approval.
“There's no reason to be blowing through here that fast other than just sheer carelessness,” Baessler related. “I’m done with it.”
To submit a complaint regarding problem intersections in the City of Muskegon, residents are asked to send an email to engineering@shorelinecity.com.
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