Here's Where Hinsdale Wants Stop Signs

HINSDALE, IL — Hinsdale officials want to make a local intersection a four-way stop because of a series of crashes in the last couple of years. And they also plan to reduce the number of intersections without stop or yield signs.

At this week's Village Board meeting, Hinsdale was described as unique with its number of uncontrolled intersections. Now, the village is considering adding signs to even more of them, as it did last year.

Officials agreed the intersection of Third and Lincoln streets should be a four-way stop. Now, it's a two-way with traffic stopping on Third. The village originally considered making the intersection a four-way stop in 2017, but a study showed no accidents happened that year, so no action was taken. But in the last two years, it has been the site of eight crashes.

The village is also looking at making five uncontrolled intersections two-way stops. The stops signs would be installed on Sixth Street at Oak Street and Park Avenue, Bruner Street at North Street, Adams Street at North, and Hickory Street at Bruner. Yield signs are proposed for Third Street at Princeton Road.

Together, these intersections have had four crashes in the last five years, not enough to warrant stop signs under uniform traffic standards, according to the village. Rather, the limited line of sight is the reason, officials said.

Trustee Luke Stifflear said he used to support stop signs only if a crash history existed. But with fewer uncontrolled intersections, he said, drivers become accustomed to all of them having stop or yield signs.

He also said the village is seeing drivers from services such as Uber, Lyft and Grubhub who are unfamiliar with "our very quiet neighborhoods."

Trustee Gerald Hughes said the plan for Lincoln and Third was a "no-brainer." But he said the proposal for stops signs at two intersections on Sixth Street was a big change. At Sixth and Oak, he said he figured the stop signs would have been planned for Oak, not Sixth. But he said the traffic from Oak Elementary may have prompted the recommendation.

Now, Sixth Street has no traffic controls between Garfield Street and County Line Road. When Sixth Street was laid out, Hughes said, it was probably intended to be more of a thoroughfare than it is these days. He said that may be because Sixth is in "crummy shape."

"At some point, we're going to make that better, and the relative traffic volumes may change, and you'll get back to what it was intended to be, with Sixth carrying more traffic than Oak," he said.

Trustee Laurel Haarlow, who lives at Sixth and Park, said that in her experience, people drive fast on Sixth.

That left Trustee Neale Byrnes puzzled.

"How?" he asked. "You ruin your suspension."

She responded, "They may not be concerned about that. They may be of an age where they're not paying for repairs."

Police Chief Brian King said that if the trustees approved the latest recommendations, only six uncontrolled intersections would remain in Hinsdale.

The Village Board did not vote on the proposals, but planned to do so at a later meeting.