What a waste of money.

The Village of Skokie is building a wonderful defense for Goma.

Waste of money for a traffic light, and wasting a lot of money for all of her court appearances. She is guilty....she caused the tragic accident and had illegal substances in her system..WHY ARE WE WASTING MONEY on her!!! Send her to jail!!!

The woman was on drugs. No speed limit, signs or stop light would have stopped her from what she did. What a waste of time and now another street has been made less viable for traveling (Oakton and Skokie Blvd due to the train always causing stopped traffic is the other). Going back to her, not only did she cause that poor young boy's death, she won't accept responsibility for her actions, as seems to be the norm nowadays. What a disgrace she is.

I agree what a waste of money. Main street speed has been reduced to 25 and as a good citizen I obey the limit but I am tired of all the honking, flashing lights and cars speeding to pass me on the right side. The village should invest in cameras to catch the speeders and they will quickly get back 308,000 in the first year. Right now the police department is monitoring that corner and that is how it should stay.

I just want to add that whenever I'm turning from a side street onto a main street / avenue I'm more cautious to look for pedestrians near crosswalks than before. I also tell myself sometimes, "Slow down. Is there really a rush to try and make this turn right now?"

This is all a result from covering Vo's death on May 21. Being on scene and learning that a child just died was a real eye opener (I also used to live near the area).

I'm willing to bet other residents have changed their driving habits since Vo's death, too.

I'm sure parents of students at Middleton appreciate the new signal, but police are already (and always have been) there after class gets out to direct traffic.

On a side note, the village held numerous forums and open meetings prior to approving this measure, so residents did have their chance to voice their opinion. That being said, does anyone feel this was a knee-jerk reaction? Or is this something that is for the greater good of the community?

Thoughts?

Does this mean they will change the speed limit of main back to 30-35 like an actual main street, instead of making us all crawl at 25 MPH? if the village has this much extra money how about repairing some pot holes, hiring a few more cops, in fact hire some crossing guards for this intersection during school hours and put the speed limit on Main back to 30 MPH so we can actually USE the street again? It is so so sad to me that the death of this little man has been used as nothing more than one political move after another by Skokie. It had to do with a drug addict driving under the influence. Period.

Yes, George, it was a knee-jerk reaction. Most of the people who drive down Main Street are NOT on drugs or alcohol, but we are all paying the price of the reduced speed limit due to this one drugged up individual who is in jail. I have lived in Skokie my entire life and I don't recall the accident rate being medium or high on Main Street to warrant a permanent reduced speed limit for a 3+ mile stretch of road. The only thing I can figure is it will be a good way for the village to earn some money through speeding tickets -- although, I have yet to see a speed trap.

I, too, get honked at and tail gated by those who are not driving under 28 MPH down Main Street -- yes, I said "28" MPH because my foot just won't allow me to crawl at 25 MPH. There aren't enough 25 MPH signs posted so people don't know better.

ONCE AGAIN THE VILLAGE IS SAFE FOR POLITICIANS. KNEE JERK? DO YA THINK? REVENUE ENHANCEMENT?

Skokie is run by horrid amateurs and the quality of life here diminishes everyday for it. A CORRUPT ONE PARTY SYSTEM in what I have heard some people refer to as "The people's republic of Shakowsky". With George Van Dusen et al just junior clones, minions.

The government and village management doesn't give a damn about the quality of life here. They are just narcissistic egotists who love sitting up on the dais going Aye, Aye, Aye.

They are either self deluding, or idiots. You decide. Maybe both. There is NO efficiency in the way they operate this backwater village. Hanin Goma should have been picked off by the Skokie Police years before Carter Vo paid with his life.

Anyone with an iota of intelligence knows that "the commission" was nothing but window dressing and yet another vehicle for more money in the village's coffers. How sad.

And now, yet another "commission" is preparing to shaft landlords for more money. Licensing they want to call it. Odd, many of the apartments in Skokie have been extant since thhe Great Depresion (1929 for you non-history majors out there.) HOW DID PROPERTY OWNERS EVER DO IT WITHOUT "LICENSING" FOR MORE THAN 80 YEARS?

Don't you just have to laugh when you see the "infomercial " that the village runs so persistently on the public access channel, boasting of how the village has not raised "their portion" of property taxes SINCE FOREVER.

Meanwhile they arbitrarily hit every resident of the village with a 5% "utilities tax" which brings in millions in revenue.

Trustee Perille remarked when they passed this new utilities tax that it was "fair, and wouldn't be a burden for oldsters, they could turn their thermostats down in winter and up in summer." PURE GENIUS.

Oh, and the village has it's own additional 1% sales tax, doubling their take of local sales taxes to about $24 MILLION. And then they doubled the cost of vehicle stickers for the 30,000 + cars and trucks in the village.

Did away with court hearings for parking tickets and seat belt violations Now you get a hearing before an "administrative officer" in village hall.

.03 cents a gallon of additional gasoline taxes on top of all the other gasoline taxes we already pay.

And don't you just love the condition of Main street from Crawford east to McCormick? Oh yeah, that's where little Carter was run down. What are they doing to fix that? The ride is crap in the westbound lanes, even worse in the eastbound lanes. I nearly get thrown off the seat of my motorcycle at a screaming 30 miles an hour near Dengeos in the eastbound lanes from a huge dip in the road.

The signal is needed for the Fire Station on Central Park Ave because of current congestion. The anticipated Ida Crown Academy at Central Park and Madison will exacerbate the problem. The school crossing has been moved from Main and Drake to take advantage of the new signal. Vo's death prompted the Village to address existing problems with traffic congestion impeding the Fire Department, with the additional bonus of resolving longstanding safety concerns for the Middleton School crossing. As far as the reduction in the speed limit, if I remember correctly, the Patch reported at the time that Village staff did not recommend or support a reduction in the speed limit. I guess the residents and School District representatives convinced the Board that reducing the speed limit would be a good idea. While I disagree with the choice, it's hard to criticize the Board for listening to the electorate

Finally. Yes finally, That beautiful "boulevarding" or landscaping that the village has done down Main street, Dempster, and now Skokie boulevard near the lovely new train station, funny thing, all those islands in the middle of the streets are "MOUNTABLE".

Compare them to the same treatments in the city of Chicago. All the islands there have a perimeter surround of nothing lower than 18 inches to several feet.

You see, in Chicago, they actually know what they are doing. Not only does this center of the road treatment impede visibility in the roadway, it impedes the ability of vehicles to cross over the center median. Such a perimeter might have saved Carter. It is impossible for cars to mount.

Thus no one dies from distracted driving when their car mounts the center landscaping and piles into any of the numerous trees there. It's swell when the village builds in road hazards at our expense. Good thing fewer and fewer drivers today are distracted by smart phones and electronic gadgets. There have been at least two deaths along Dempster in separate one car crashes in the last few years. One car, One tree. One dead. But that's OK I am sure the dead had no mother,father, brothers, sisters or loved ones.The story says they think he had a medical "episode" prior to the crash. Somehow I don't think the tree helped him. Crowded close to the street.

http://evanston.suntimes.com/17804140-781/evanston-man-dies-after-one-car-crash-in-skokie.html

FYI Brian- neither of the cars in the Vo crash crossed the landscaped median. Vo was not crossing the street either, contrary to popular belief. He was on the parkway or the sidewalk on the NE corner of Main and Drake. The stoned driver spun around after turning left and crashing into a van that was driving EB on Main.

So Michael,

The village makes changes when someone dies eh? Would a stoplight and a 5 mph lower speed limit have saved Carter? You seem to know a lot about it. Are you FOR unsafe center medians filled with trees? Snow doesn't fall on the mentioned streets and rain doesn't fall there either, eh?

You seem to miss the point Michael. We have idiots for traffic engineers. No center K-Rails where Skokie Blvd winds beneath the train overpasses south of Oakton, but sidewalks on both sides of the road there. A single sidewalk would not have sufficed? With a center K-Rail keeping high speed traffic with closing speeds in excess of 80 mph separated with a physical barrier? No functional street lighting beneath it either. Though the broken and un-maintained fixtures under these overpasses remain. Unused and un-repaired for years.

Nice right turn only on Dempster where the traffic contol light at the Skokie Swift entrance/exit is on Dempster. They re-engineered the entire damned street in front of it, but apparently our traffic Dodo didn't think it would be a good idea for eastbound traffic on Dempster to have a right turn only lane, expediting the flow of through traffic. The most basic of lanes.

Shall I go on?

You don't have contracts with the village do you Michael? Or do you have traffic study contracts? The speed reduction is solely for revenue. The stoplight unnecessary. Keep drinking the cool aid.

And apparently you don't understand the concept of un-mountable medians. Shall I explain K-rails and retarded traffic engineers as well? Drive any modern car with airbags and belts into a four inch diameter tree at 25 mph or greater and the odds are about 90% THAT YOU END UP DEAD. Pretty trees me love leaves.

Hank had it right, what a waste of money. A feat our city fathers have mastered in spades.

Drive into the end of a of a raised concrete median barrier or, to a lesser extent, a K-rail and see how that compares to a tree. The low curb center median- with trees-was in place since the early sixties. It still exists on Crawford. You seem to have forgotten-or choose to ignore-that fact. As far as obstruction of vision goes, which was another concern voiced in the aftermath of the Vo tradgedy, I feel the landscaping is a problem but less so than a raised concrete median replete with landscaping. I call them as I see them. Some of my posts are critical of the Village, and some are supportive, based on my beliefs. I am not simply rabid in my condemnation of their choices. To each their own. Sometimes there's agreement and somtimes not.

I invite anyone who questions whether it was a good idea to reduce the speed on Main from Skokie Blvd to McCormick go to the Safer Routes To Schools website where it lays out the statistical chances of a pedestrian surviving when the speed limit is lowered. See: http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/engineering/slowing_down_traffic.cfm
Also, slowing down traffic makes a city more pedestrian-friendly and the more pedestrian-friendly a city is, the higher the real estate values. Finally, why is everyone in such a hurry down Main Street? Honestly, do the math, how much extra time are you losing by going from McCormick to Skokie Blvd 5 miles less per hour? I have lived by Main Street in this area for over a decade and turning onto Main Street (with the high median greenery in the summer especially) is like taking one's life into one's own hands. I have children at Middleton and we have been trying to get traffic to slow down for years and years. People are in such a hurry that they even go around the cars stopped for children crossing with crossing guards and speed right over the crosswalks. Human life is so much more important than saving a few seconds down a street! (by the way, if the light was needed for the firehouse then fine, but I'm not happy about it going there near the school because studies show that drivers tend to speed up on yellow to avoid stopping at a red light and could injure pedestrians in the process -- another caution to everyone to slow down!)

Horses, from here on out only horses and Amish buggies on Main. Enough is enough. We must end this senseless killing. Maybe wheelchairs too.

You can find studies to prove gnats are hungrier on summer days..... our village is famous for all it's studies...however sadly, not for it's brilliance or low taxes.

Whenever a "discussion" degenerates into a discussion of somebody's study or goes....comparative...Logic evaporates. Plain and simple. If we raised the speed limit on Main to 75 mph I'll bet no pedestrians would ever be killed. They would stay the hell away from the roadway. Does that work for you?

The reality of this idiotic debate is that some irresponsible 23 year old who doesn't give a damn about anybody but herself, thinks it's OK to get stoned on weed and amphetamines and operate a motor vehicle...anywhere.

Damn it, let's pass a law and make weed and amphetamines illegal without a doctor's prescription. Oh you mean there already is such a law? Well for God's sakes let's make some more laws. That will end the senselessness of irresponsible self centered behavior of people like Hanin Goma.

let's do a study on that !!

I'm not sure that having children is the issue here. Even though he may not have children doesn't mean he has no interest in other people's children.

I have lived in Skokie for the last 40 years and have seen many wasted expenditures by the village.The 308,000 for a traffic light is not going to stop people from being irresponsible.Of course it's a knee jerk reaction,it usually is when a child is involved.The 25 mph speed limit is already a crawl down Main street.The landscaped medians already have slowed down traffic,especially in the summer when they grow into the roadway.Let's add another stop light and maybe some speed bumps to make it totally undriveable.25 mph is already a side street speed limit and I'm fine with it as long as people pay attention(stay off your cell phones).As for the hearings I never saw anything about them?

What studies have you been reading?Or do you just drive faster between those medians?As for Evanston cares much more than about pedestrians than Skokie?How did you come to that conclusion? Did you take a poll, or ask the mayor, trustees,police department before making that (your opinionated)comment?That is one of the things about Patch,it lets everyone give their opinion so others can disagree or at least call them on their ideas.