(Milford)– Meeting in special session Thursday evening, the Milford City Council heard public comment on a recently completed study of Highway 71 through the city. It was conducted by the Iowa Department of Transportation through its Traffic Engineering Assistance Program. One of the options it explored is narrowing the highway through Milford from four lanes to three, with a turning lane. Mayor Steve Anderson says the council heard from residents both for and against that concept…
“There are some concerns with traffic flows and people being able to get in and out of their properties if we would move from a four lane to a three lane. There’s concern from the businesses about traffic. It’s real congested for people to park on the highway and get out, but it sounds like what people here wanted to do is to look at doing baby steps. Look at having a speed study done, maybe reduce the speeds coming through town, see if that works. If that doesn’t work, also look at possibly more traffic control and then if that doesn’t work then maybe we would evaluate and look at a three lane at that point.”
Anderson explains what happens from here…
“We’ve got an Infrastructure Committee. We’ll probably meet and then make a recommendation to the council to get the speed study at least started and then start talking to the D.O.T about some re-surfacing issues we’ve got on the highway that we’d like to get resolved.”
Anderson adds the D.O.T has not given any indication as to when any improvements to the highway through Milford could be in the offing…
“They’ve been kind of waiting for us to come back with some comments in how they want to proceed, so I think their timeline is kind of what our timeline is, how fast we want to move is what they’ll work on with us, so.”
Anderson says the council was pleased with the input at Thursday evening’s meeting and thanked those who attended the session.
