Motorists driving on Green Street/U.S. 60 East will see a speed limit change in the coming weeks, said city of Henderson officials at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting.
The change came via a request from the city to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to lower the speed limit from 45 miles per hour to 35 miles per hour starting at a spot before the cloverleaf near Audubon Pawn Shop.
A sign there that currently posts the limit at 45 will be changed in the next week or two, said City Manager Dylan Ward. He said KYTC officials will make the change.
Henderson Mayor Brad Staton said the 35 miles per hour zone will extend to somewhere near the entrance into Hoffman Plaza closest to Lowe’s.
Henderson Police Department Chief Billy Bolin said officers will give drivers some leeway in the weeks after the new sign and speed limit change is in place. Bolin said motorists will need some time to get used to the change, and in that period, he said officers will stop cars that are traveling above the new speed limit and give warnings.
After a set period of warnings has ended, officers will begin to give tickets, Bolin said.
The speed limit change is a small piece of work in the area around Hoffman Plaza planned in the next several years, the mayor said.
Staton mentioned the eventual construction of what’s being called a “loop road” that will connect at an intersection behind Walmart and loop behind it and subdivisions there, paralleling I-69 for a distance before intersecting with U.S. 60 East directly across from Wathen Lane.
He also said there’s a proposal to build an entrance and exit road that would connect the area behind Walmart—where more retail is planned—to U.S. 41.
Additionally, the city commission recently approved a city of Henderson staff request to apply for a $10 million grant from the federal program Safe Streets For All, and that funding—if the city were to be awarded the grant—would be used to design and build a safer intersection at Barret Boulevard and U.S. 60, which in a recent two-year count compiled by HPD is the intersection where the most traffic incidents occur in Henderson.
For context, the 35-miles-per-hour speed limit on Green Street starts at the intersection of Green Street and Sand Lane and is in place in both directions until the area just south of the cloverleaf. There is a sign out front of the North Green Liquor and Wine on the south side of the cloverleaf announcing the speed limit increase to 45 miles per hour.
