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Public hearing draws residents’ road‑safety concerns as Young County seeks federal planning grant
Summary
The county held a public hearing for a Safe Streets for All planning grant (planning grant estimated at about $200,000) and gathered public input on intersections, Highway 67, local county roads and narrow bridges to inform a larger implementation proposal.
Young County held a public hearing at its Jan. 27 commissioners court meeting to solicit public input for a Safe Streets for All planning grant application and to document community support required by the federal program.
County staff described the process in two phases: a planning grant (staff estimated roughly $200,000) that would fund engineers and data analysis over about a year, followed by a separate implementation grant to fund construction and road safety projects identified in the plan. Staff said the planning grant will assemble crash history, dispatch data, and other datasets to identify priority intersections and underserved communities; the plan will be a required foundation for later implementation funding.
Dozens of residents and local officials offered location‑specific comments during the hearing. Recurring themes included concerns about Highway 67 (speed transitions through populated stretches, blind spots, high truck speeds), requests for rumble strips and shoulder work on county roads such as Flat Rock Road and South Bend Cemetery Road, narrow and flooded bridges, requests for traffic calming and pedestrian safety measures in downtown Graham (Main and Grand), and calls for more enforcement where speed limits are exceeded. Speakers urged the project to cover both state highways and county roads, and stressed the need to identify underserved communities in grant planning.
County staff and the grant writer described the county’s Transportation Improvement Committee and the data tools used to map crash history and identify high‑injury networks; they said roughly half the county crashes identified are at intersections. Staff asked residents to sign the meeting sign‑in sheet to document public support for the planning grant application.
County leaders said the planning grant is the first step in a multi‑year effort; if the planning work identifies projects, those would be the basis of a later, larger implementation request. The court did not take a funding vote on the grant at the meeting; staff said they will use the public input and the sign‑in list in the application.
