good to know...

 

Follow up on "speed trap":

Posted on Thu, Feb. 26, 2004

STAR-TELEGRAM TIM BEDISON
SPEED-LIMIT CONTROVERSY

Town to drop disputed tickets

By Dave Ferman

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

WESTLAKE - Westlake will not try to collect on speeding tickets written after the state took down speed signs on a disputed 1-mile stretch of Texas 114 in early January, Mayor Scott Bradley said Wednesday.

"We want to do the right thing by all means," Bradley said. "Tickets written before the signs came down will be enforced, but after the signs came down it's unfair to ticket someone if there were no signs up."

The state and Westlake disagree on the speed limit on a 1-mile stretch of 114 between Trophy Lake Road and Trophy Club Drive. Westlake says the speed limit is 50 mph, based on a 2000 ordinance.

Terry Sams, an operations director with the Texas Department of Transportation, says the speed limit is 70 mph because no speed limit study was passed into law by Westlake after construction ended there around 18 months ago and because the 2000 ordinance covered only frontage roads.

The area was posted at 50 mph, but those signs were taken down by the Texas Department of Transportation "right before Christmas," Sams said. Westlake Town Manager Trent Petty had them put back up. Sams said she did not know the date the signs were taken down again in January.

"Based on some of the phone calls we've received, it appears there have been tickets written after the signs came down," she said. "That's the way it appears. At least two of the complaints I've received came after the signs came down."

Keller Police Chief Mark Hafner said officers are only writing speeding tickets for posted speed limits.

"We're in the middle of this," he said. "We know nothing about the signs going up and down. This is between TxDOT and Westlake, and it's going to end up in municipal court, and that's the place for it."

Sams said last week that the contested stretch of 114 has had no posted speed limit.

Trophy Club resident Stephen Skeen received his citation for speeding in the zone Jan. 8.

A recently completed speed study of the 1-mile stretch recommended a 60-mph speed limit. The study was sent to Westlake on Tuesday, Sams said, and must now be voted on by the town's Board of Alderman.

"It's not uncommon for cities to vote on a speed study and mail the results back," she said. "Unless they have questions, we usually don't hear from them."

Petty said in an e-mail that the Fort Worth office of the Department of Transportation "disagrees with the Dallas assertation that the roadway speed should be 70 mph because they are about to start yet another phase of the construction on the Precinct Line Bridge at 114."

Fort Worth district public information officer Mike Peters said that because the disputed stretch of 114 is in Denton County, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Dallas office.

"The Fort Worth district is not involved with this issue with Westlake and the Dallas district," Peters said.

He said that a construction project on 0.4 miles of 114 on either side of Precinct Line Road will begin this summer. The $8.3 million project will widen 114 to four lanes with frontage roads and is due to take 18 months to two years.

"The speed limit will be lowered when the construction begins," Peters said. The intersection of Precinct Line Road and 114 is east of the 1-mile stretch of highway between Trophy Lake Road and Trophy Club Drive.

 

Good..that they decided not to enforce the tickets after the sign came down. I would have been tics off too!! :fluffy: