Engineers plan speed humps near Lake Avalon

HORIZON WEST — Orange County officials presented a Municipal Service Benefit Unit plan June 11 at Korean Presbyterian Church that calls for 13 speed humps on Lake Avalon Rural Settlement streets around Lake Avalon.

Many residents of that settlement have concerns about non-residents speeding through their neighborhood as a cut-through, including an instance in which a car sped past Avalon Home & Property Owners Association President Carol Johnson, who was driving the same direction and about to turn into her driveway, she said.

Frank C. Yokiel, the project manager from the Orange County Traffic Engineering Division, proposed the installation of two speed humps along the southern half of Williams Road, one in the middle of each of the three easternmost segments of Seidner Road and eight on Davenport Road between its intersections with Seidner and Avalon roads. Humps would be three inches high and 12 feet long, he said.

Yokiel had proposed a speed hump project for this neighborhood last year, but the community did not garner enough mail ballot votes — 66% of property owner votes needed for approval — among residents in the monthlong ballot period after the project passed the petition and public meeting phases.

“A year ago to the date, basically, we found out that the MSBU for the speed humps through Davenport-Williams did not pass,” Yokiel said. “It did not pass by one vote.”

Yokiel had to wait a mandatory period of one year before looking at it again, and residents once more had contacted him with their interest.

Although he was not sure a one-time tax on the settlement for the humps was the problem last year, Yokiel said there was a possibility that Orange County could fund the whole project. At a rate of about $3,000 per hump, the total cost would be about $39,000.

One resident said several neighbors who would have approved of the project last year were on long vacations when voting occurred.

As a result, county officials will consider moving the vote to late summer and extending the ballot period to as long as two months. If that vote passes, the Board of County Commissioners would hold a vote for final approval, including District 1 Commissioner S. Scott Boyd, who attended the meeting.

Boyd said he and other members of the Central Florida Expressway Authority had a high priority on an alternate southern route from State Road 50, with funding as the biggest current concern. A better idea of the project should be available within eight months, Boyd said. Such a plan could include partial-road tolls, and other considerations include Lake County’s sector plan, South Apopka-Vineland Road and Sand Lake Road, he said.

One couple opposed the humps because of damaging effects they could have to the products in trucks delivering to Razbuton Nursery, which abuts the southern side of Davenport Road west of Rex Drive.

Another resident said other truckers not making local deliveries were using Avalon Road and other nearby roads despite being told not to.

As for Rex Drive, residents raised concerns with speeds in excess of 50 mph on that road, as well, which extends south from Davenport Road. Yokiel said studies on the area around Dangler and Spyglass Hill roads had occurred, too, and that residents in that area would receive a separate ballot for a similar process.

Once approved, the humps along Williams, Seidner and Davenport roads would take one or two months to implement, Yokiel said. Boyd said the humps could be in by Christmas.

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].