A key piece to the proposed quiet zone in the City of Jefferson is the traffic count results.

The City Council has been looking into the possibility of establishing a quiet zone after starting the project by closing Pinet Street in September of 2014. The are four railroad crossings left where train horns are activated and the Council wants to see about either eliminating the sound altogether or lessen it to a degree. One critical part of the issue was conducting a traffic count study.

Engineering firm Snyder & Associates recently conducted the study. The results show comparisons between the traffic flow of April of 2013 to May of 2016. Elm Street, which is the overpass bridge, is about 73 percent or 7,439 vehicles of the total traffic compared to 68 percent or 6,674 vehicles in 2013. The next highest is Grimmell Road at 1,035 vehicles or 10.2 percent, which was up from 893 vehicles in 2013. Cedar Street crossing was the next highest amount at 740 vehicles, which was about a 22 percent drop from 2013’s count of 958 vehicles. Wilson Avenue had 505 vehicles and that was a slight decrease from 2013 with 558 vehicles. Maple Street had the lowest amount of vehicles with 414, a slight increase from 2013 with 407 vehicles.

The streets/sewer/sanitation/water committee reviewed the figures and will recommend to the City Council to set a public meeting to get viewpoints from residents of what they would like to see done with the railroad crossings.