Mt. Kisco Looks to Study Pedestrian Safety, Traffic Calming in Village
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Mount Kisco is expected to retain the services of a firm to conduct a study aimed at ways to improve pedestrian safety and slow traffic to make the village safer to travel.
A Request for Proposal attracted three bidders for the work – AKRF, a White Plains planning and engineering firm, and BFJ Planning and Sam Schwartz, both based in Manhattan, Assistant Village Manager Kenneth Famulare told the Village Board at its work session last Thursday. The village set aside $100,000 in the current fiscal year to fund the study, he said.
Village officials also hope to apply for federal grant money in the hopes of implementing more elaborate recommendations that may come out of the study.
But Mayor Gina Picinich said there are projects that the municipality could do that would not require large outlays.
“We’re doing a study to identify how we can make our community safer,” Picinich said. “In order to make our community safer, we will need to do a variety of different things. Some we can implement on our own with our own funding and some of it we may have to look to the outside for funding.”
There is about $5 billion available to local, county and state governments over the next five years for transportation-type improvements for the federal government. Governments have until July 10 to submit a grant application to have a shot at the first $1 billion.
The effort would comply with New York State’s Complete Street Act that was signed into law about 12 years ago that requires municipalities as well as counties and the state to consider the mobility of all people when devising transportation-related topics that use state or federal money.
Famulare said that while the village had sought to make improvements related to Complete Streets, there is also an emphasis on other tasks that can make Mount Kisco safer. Over the past year or two, the goal of slowing traffic and making the village safer for pedestrians has been amplified.
“In addition to a Complete Streets, it also grew into a focus on traffic calming measures, which although is part of the Complete Streets program, we had specifically asked for that to be a focus of the proposals in that subsequent to the board and the Complete Streets plans, traffic calming became more of an immediate issue,” Famulare explained.
Village Manager Ed Brancati said traffic calming measures can include signage, traffic signals and warning lights. Mount Kisco may also consider legislation to lower the speed limit throughout the village to 25 miles per hour; however, that would require an engineering study to justify the change, he said.
While trustees Anne Bianchi and Karine Patino appeared supportive about choosing one of the firms to conduct a study, Trustee Karen Schleimer was highly skeptical. She said the $100,000 in the 2023-24 budget for the study wasn’t discussed during budget sessions.
Furthermore, it is unclear whether the village would be able to find the money or receive permission from the state for major improvements to one of the state routes, such as making Main Street one way, Schleimer said.
“We need to get the public involved,” Schleimer said. “If we’re not going to be able to change any of the roads in downtown, what are we going to be able to do downtown, change the sidewalks?”
Picnich told Schleimer that the funding for the study had been raised during budget discussions and that she was “looking for problems that don’t exist.”
“We don’t know what the outcome of this will be but we have to be thinking ahead, how do we defray the costs for anything that will come out of this,” Picinich said. “So we’re just trying to plan for how do we (secure) other sources of revenue to cover this. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to do it if we don’t get it, but we should be thinking broadly about other streams of revenue.”
The mayor said the board would hold a work session to discuss the issue again and possibly decide on which consulting firm to retain to conduct the study.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
