CHARLESTON, W.Va.—- Vehicle and pedestrian safety has become a topic of concern in cities in West Virginia and Charleston is one of them.
Chad Robinson
At Monday’s Council meeting, Councilman Chad Robinson proposed a draft bill that emulates the one that Wheeling passed a couple of months ago. He said on 580 Live Tuesday morning that the bill takes some of the language from Wheeling’s ordinance but also changes different language. For Wheeling’s bill it has the areas that will be targeted are only 25 mph, however in Charleston those areas will be 30 mph.
Robinson said that this bill isn’t the first time that this topic has come up since he’s been a councilman.
“We’ve looked at it in the past, when I first got on council probably five years ago, during COVID we had a bill, to deal with similar issues about ingress, egress into the city, about public safety, about corners, medians, things like that,” Robinson said. “It passed two committees unanimous, and then we didn’t take it up for certain reasons.”
Two of those reasons were the threat of lawsuits and wondering if they had the language right in the bill itself.
Another reason was because the bill was introduced during COVID, and they didn’t have much time to talk about it because they were doing zoom meetings.
“We’re going to have lots of discussion on the issue,” he said. “I’ve already met one time with my ordinance and rules committee looking at a draft bill before it was introduced last night. We talked for 50 minutes, there were questions, comments, concerns.”
The main area that they are going to focus on are the areas that have heavy traffic and see where else may need looked at down the road.
“Let’s first look at the high rate of traffic, the speeds coming off and, on the interstates, we’ll start there and see where we go,” Robinson said.
The main issue is people in cars stopping for the people who are positioned at these traffic areas.
“We have individuals in cars stopping in the middle of the flow of traffic and handing out money when there’s cars coming off the interstate behind them causing wrecks,” Robinson said.
Two examples he gave were coming off of Pennsylvania onto Virginia Street and in Kanawha City near the Taco Bell where there is still construction going on.
He also stated that the draft bill is going to include people who hold signs for children’s fundraising and people who are holding signs for campaigns.