GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Greenville leaders are keeping neighborhoods streets safe, and keeping big trucks out of neighborhoods.
“What you really want to do is, is you want to make sure you’re protecting neighborhoods to begin with. So, you’re protecting them in crime. You’re protecting them from speeding cars. You’re protecting your kids. You’re protecting your walkers and part of that also is to make sure that your large commercial vehicles are staying on the main roads and not cutting through some of our neighborhoods,” said Greenville City Council member John DeWorken.
Some people who live in the Haynie-Sirrine neighborhood said many people, especially trucks, cut through their area from main roads.
“It’s a variety of trucks…18-wheelers, dump trucks, cement trucks,” said Tony Rosemond, a Haynie Street resident. “Just trucks, trucks, trucks. Makes me think it’s a truck route, instead of a car route.”
“It’s a narrow street. You got cars on each side, street parking and they come through holding up traffic like a little blocking up traffic. It’s just kind of frustrating,” he said.
“They’re pretty fast, they’re loud. Sometimes the house shakes. If I’m upstairs working in my office up there, actually we feel the house trembling a little bit. They carry a lot of weight,” said Petrea Warneck, a Haynie St. resident.
“It’s been very problematic,” she said.
After hearing these complaints for years, Greenville is prohibiting trucks with more than six wheels from using Haynie Street.
“Part of our neighborhood protection plan is, we’ve had a lot of complaints over the years, about the large trucks. Now when we’re talking about large trucks, now we’re not talking like UPS or something like that,” said Lillian Brock Flemming, City of Greenville’s Mayor Pro-Tem.
“First of all, if it’s a cut through road, they weren’t supposed to come through there anyway. They were supposed to go on the federal roads–on the larger roads that sometimes are wider and don’t have so many neighborhoods in it,” Flemming said. “To me, it’s part of my neighborhood protection plan, because if you have little children sleeping, or elderly people, or even animals. Sometimes those trucks are extremely loud.”
The city recently took over Haynie Street from SCDOT to make this happen.
“Our plan has been, we have to go through–study it. Look at which roads are the ones that’s valuable, in order for us to be able to restrict those trucks from being on those roads,” said Flemming. “We have about four or five roads that have had the greatest impact with the trucks coming through and those are the ones that we are restricting.”
Truck restrictions are also in place on Park Street, Ridge Road, and Butler Avenue in the Hampton Pinckney Community.
“Sometimes they take shortcuts through neighborhoods and they’re very loud. Extremely loud. Coming through, changing gears. Coming through those neighborhoods, and so it could be a problem,” Flemming said.
“There will be signs and it’ll particularly say what kind of trucks are prohibited,” Flemming said.
City staff said law enforcement officers are making sure the rule is followed.
“Our police, they put it on their radar. When we began a process, we do more education and then we do deal with the major selective enforcement,” Flemming explained. “You do more education. You see them coming through and then you kind of stop them, pull them over and warn them that this road, you’re not going to be able to come through this road any longer.”
“If you do, the next time, you’ll get a ticket. So, it’s more education first, because we want to work with people,” she said.
City leaders said the goal is improve safety and reduce noise. Some residents said they’re relieved.
“I hope this ordinance stops these big oversized trucks from coming through here,” Rosemond said.
“We’ve been talking to city officials for awhile now and they’ve really come through. They listen to us. They care, and I think the truck signs will make a difference,” Warneck said.
