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Residents say Bonds Career Center traffic is creating dangerous conditions in neighborhood
Summary
Neighbors described repeated stop‑sign violations, speeding and heavy school traffic around Cunningham Drive and Vandevanter Drive and urged the council to pursue traffic calming and rerouting to Main Street.
Residents near the Bonds Career Center told the Greer City Council the school’s arrival and dismissal traffic is creating persistent safety hazards for drivers and pedestrians.
At the meeting Eddie Burch, who gave his address as 116 Vandevanter Drive, said council and staff have seen video showing “disregard for traffic laws” at the stop sign on Cunningham Drive and that high speeds and repeated violations make a serious accident “inevitable.” He asked council to take action beyond short‑term measures.
Mark Buff, 202 Van De Venter, echoed Burch and provided counts and examples: he said the center can generate more than 150 cars and roughly a half dozen buses on class days, and he said he had documented “73 cases of erratic vehicle behavior since November,” including vehicles 15–30 mph over the posted 25 mph limit. Buff said the Bond Center instructs students to exit via Van De Venter and Cunningham and suggested redirecting center traffic to Highway 14/Main Street and installing speed humps to reduce cut‑through speeding.
Speakers and neighbors pointed to two local factors they say have worsened the problem: changes to traffic flow on North Main Street that make the neighborhood an attractive bypass, and the Bond Center’s two daily class sessions, which create four concentrated loading and dismissal periods.
Council and staff described several actions the city has already taken: installation of a larger stop sign on Cunningham, a speed‑display sign on Van De Venter and deployment of a school resource officer during dismissal in a prior year. Both speakers said the current measures have addressed only dismissal traffic and not morning loading, and asked the council to consider additional, permanent traffic‑calming measures.
No formal motion or vote on a specific traffic remedy was recorded during the meeting. Speakers asked the council to pursue options including speed humps, restricting Bond Center vehicle access to Main Street (Highway 14) and renewed enforcement during load/unload periods.
The council did not announce a specific follow‑up at the meeting but several councilmembers asked staff to review traffic engineering options and feasibility of petitions for speed humps and rerouting.
