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Plano council hears plan to restart neighborhood traffic management with consultant contract scaled to one year
Summary
City engineering staff presented a restart plan for the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program including a revised consultant scope scaled from two years to one year at an estimated cost of $110,000; council members debated in‑house capacity, public safety priorities and directed staff to return with a proposal.
Caleb Thornhill, the city’s director of engineering, presented an update on the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program and a revised consultant scope intended to resume a program that had been suspended in about February 2009. Thornhill said the program update would use a shorter one‑year consultant engagement, trimmed from an original two‑year scope, with an estimated cost of $110,000.
Thornhill described the program’s evaluation process: staff or the consultant would collect traffic speeds and volumes, average daily traffic, and neighborhood petition support before recommending traffic calming treatments — examples include speed humps, raised table crosswalks, pavement narrowing and speed cushions. He said speeding and cut‑through traffic make up “99.9 of the comments we get.” Thornhill said the consultant would set up the program, perform initial evaluations and hand the program over to city staff at the end of the engagement.
Council members debated tradeoffs between hiring consultants and building in‑house capacity. Council Member Anthony said the $110,000 one‑year option was “not much more or perhaps even less than the cost of one full time equivalent position” and urged clearing a backlog of 36 pending requests to address safety. Council Member Shelby and others asked whether studies would be concentrated at the worst locations; Thornhill said the consultant would focus on the highest‑need corridors and that the city has some equipment and staff but lacks capacity. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Homer and other council members said they supported moving forward with the one‑year contract and asked staff to return with a future agenda item; no formal procurement vote was taken that night.
Council discussion also covered non‑engineering responses such as police radar enforcement and volunteer programs; Thornhill noted those give temporary speed reductions while physical calming measures can provide more persistent results but may affect emergency response. Council members asked staff to consider equity and prioritization and to return with refined proposals and cost/benefit analysis.
