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Garner to convert traffic‑control ordinances into an interactive map to improve transparency and enforcement
Summary
Town Attorney Terry Jones and GIS staff demonstrated a draft interactive map that will replace lengthy code listings for stop signs, speed zones, parking restrictions and other traffic controls; staff plan a cleanup ordinance and later a formal adoption to make the map legally operative.
Garner’s legal and GIS staff presented an initiative on Oct. 30 to recodify the town’s traffic‑control ordinances into an interactive map intended to make speed limits, stop signs, parking regulations and other rules easier for staff and residents to find.
“TThis is a project I’ve wanted to do for several years,” Town Attorney Terry Jones said, describing the work to translate chapter 10 (motor vehicles and traffic) from text lists into a geospatial, publicly navigable format. Jones said the mapping will cover stop intersections, speed restrictions on town streets, school zones, no‑parking segments, loading zones, restricted turns and other traffic controls that are currently codified in dozens of pages of ordinance text.
GIS staff demonstrated an early version of the map showing stop‑sign locations, ordinance numbers and enactment dates, and layers for town and DOT roads. The map, Jones said, will also help the town correct historical mismatches between ordinance language and where signs are actually installed.
Council members asked whether the ordinance dataset could be integrated with DOT data, accident records and traffic‑calming locations; GIS staff said those layers can be added later but the immediate focus is mapping town ordinances and verifying adoption history. Jones said staff will finish populating and verifying the map, bring a cleanup ordinance to correct inconsistencies, and then return with an ordinance to adopt the map as the official traffic‑control ordinance. She noted the map will not be publicly accessible until accuracy checks are complete and the council adopts it.
Council members otherwise praised the tool as a transparency and enforcement aid for police, planning and engineering staff, and suggested adding non‑ordinance traffic‑calming assets so residents can see where physical calming devices exist across neighborhoods. The council did not vote on the project at the meeting; staff requested continued support and time to complete the dataset before presenting an adoption ordinance.
