City Council voted Monday night to lower speed limits on all or parts of three major Milton roads, extending the size of the Cambridge High school zone to incorporate King’s Ridge Christian School as part of the same measure.

Once revised signage is installed, online mapping services are updated, and other needed procedural steps are taken, these changes will go into effect:

• The speed limit along New Providence Road will be 40 mph, down from the current 45 mph.
• The portion of Thompson Road between Redd and Hopewell roads will also have a 40 mph speed limit, which represents another 5 mph drop.
• Similarly, Bethany Bend between Hopewell Road and Highway 9 will be at 40 mph (again, below its present 45 mph).
• The Cambridge High “School Zone” will expand further southwest along Bethany Bend to just before North Park’s entrance so that it includes outside King’s Ridge.
• The entirety of this same “School Zone” will have a 30 mph speed limit, which is 5 mph less than what it is currently.

This is the third time that the City has reduced speed limits on select roads since the City Council’s August 2022 approval of Milton’s Local Road Safety Plan. This guiding document incorporated public feedback, Council guidance, and a vast pool of analyzed data and then outlined concrete recommendations to make the city’s roadways as safe as possible.

Reducing vehicle speeds was one of the six “emphasis areas” specified in that plan. After its approval, the City promptly went to work to identify exactly where and how speed limits might be reduced. As Community Development and Public Works Director Sara Leaders explained Monday to Council, this involved a multi-stage process starting with conducting traffic counts, working with engineers to evaluate this data, and preparing an ETI (which stands for Engineering Traffic Investigation) study.

After that, the Council must vote to submit proposed speed limit changes to the Georgia Department of Transportation and Department of Public Safety for review. Those State authorities can take into account several factors – including current speeds, crashes, the number of driveways, and the presence of bicyclists and pedestrians – as they decide whether or not to allow any revisions.

If those State agencies approve, altered speed limits can be incorporated into a city’s “radar permit,” which defines the law enforcement parameters for a given road. The City Council then completes the process by granting their final approval – which was what happened, unanimously, on Monday night.

Prior to this most recent meeting, the City twice before had gone from start-to-finish in this process. The first led to reducing speed limits along Bethany Way as well as portions of Freemanville, Providence, and Mayfield roads. After the second round, the City dropped speed limits on Batesville, Hamby, and Hickory Flat roads to 40 mph.

Following Leaders’ presentation on Monday, Councilmembers posed a handful of questions. The last, from Councilmember Brian Dolan, asked when the latest reduced speed limits will go into effect.

“We have all the signs in inventory, so it’s just a matter of getting them installed over the next couple of weeks,” said Leaders. She added the school zone expansion could take a little longer to relocate flashers to the new zone boundaries.

ALCOHOL BEVERAGE LICENSES GRANTED TO EPHESUS, OLDE BLIND DOG

This discussion and vote came at the end of an evening that began with the City Council’s unanimous approval of the meeting’s Consent Agenda.

This Consent Agenda included an agreement for NV5 Engineers and Consultants to provide professional design services focused on improving operations and safety in the Birmingham Highway school zone. (To learn more about this project, go to  www.miltonga.gov/BirminghamHighway.) Another item gives BM&K the greenlight to work with the City on acquiring right-of-way needed for the Bethany Road and Providence Road roundabout project.

The Council also approved an agreement with Wrecking Corp of America to demolish abandoned structures on City-owned properties such as Lakhapani Preserve, the Cooper Sandy and Hopewell Road greenspaces, plus a Bethany Bend property near North Park.

This action was followed by Public Hearings, and subsequent approval votes, for a pair of alcohol beverage licenses. One went to the new owner of Olde Blind Dog, a popular Irish restaurant in downtown Crabapple. The other alcohol beverage license was for Ephesus Turkish Kitchen, a new Turkish restaurant off Windward Parkway.

The City Council’s next Regular Meeting is scheduled for March 16.