Thank you for making us aware of your concern. Street widening is beyond the scope of our Huntsville Connect service request program; however, we will be glad to send someone out to take a look and report back. We will leave this request "open" until we learn more from our urban development department.

Sincerely,

The Huntsville Connect Customer Service Team

We appreciate your patience while our departments looked into this matter. Traffic Engineering, Public Works and Engineering have been out to inspect the road and provided us the following information.

There are apparently a number of narrow streets across the base of the mountain, including Wellman, which were constructed many years ago under different requirements. While we would not build a new street to these specifications, the City is able to provide sanitation and public safety services to the residents. Sanitation says they have room to turnaround at the end of the street, but they leave it to the driver to choose his path in and out, and it appears some drivers prefer to back out.

As to widening the street, if the City had the resources to do so, it would require an additional 12 feet of roadway, which would take six feet off of each neighbors’ front yard, on both sides of the road, plus an additional six to eight feet on one side for required sidewalks. Some of the front yards are already fairly close to the road, and residents might find the encroachment excessive. Should everyone agree that this is the desired path forward, there is still the cost, which is estimated to be at about $50,000 (drainage, curb, etc.) for this short segment. If the City widens Wellman, it would be obligated to widen the other streets at the base of the mountain, too.

As with so many requests to the City, it is a matter of using taxpayer dollars toward the greatest public need. Our departments carefully considered this request and would be glad to assist if funds were available. Funding for roadwork of this type, however, is prioritized for highly trafficked areas, pedestrian/handicapped crosswalks in highly trafficked areas, and road resurfacing.

We will close this issue at this time, but if you may have additional questions, our Director of Engineering Kathy Martin would be glad to further discuss. Just let us know at communications@huntsvilleal.gov.

Thank you again for using Huntsville Connect.

Thanks for your reply. Seems like widening the street East of Wellman (16') to same width as the area West of Wellman (30') would be appropriate .