Three stop signs recently went up at the three way intersection of West 6th Avenue and Freedly Street in Conshohocken. The stop signs, which were put up under a temporary (90 day) emergency order by Mayor Bob Frost, are a response to complaints from residents about the unsafe conditions due to the volume and speed of traffic along the road.

Since a group of residents raised their concerns at a Borough Council meeting in early July, the Conshohocken Police Department conducted a study to determine if there is a problem with speeding on West 6th Avenue (the study focused on the 400 block, which is on the Colwell Lane end of the street). Lt. George Metz presented the study to Borough Council last evening and the data from the study shows that the vast majority of cars aren’t going over the speed limit.

The initial study utilized the display for the test device (it displayed your speed as your approached). Believing that may have encouraged cars to slow down, they redid the test without the display on. According to Metz, both studies were very similar.

As you can see in the image of the report below (sorry for it being not the best photo), The 50th percentile of the vehicles came in under the speed limit of 25 mph (at 22.26 mph). The 85th percentile of drivers averaged 25.14 mph.

The majority people that were speeding were not speeding excessively and are within the state dictated 10 mph over the speed limit allowance given to drivers (if you don’t believe us, see page 8). Metz mentioned this state mandate during his presentation.

The study was conducted over a seven day period and there were over 11,128 vehicles tracked. The stats shows are exclusively from the study done without alerting drivers of their speed.