People living along Tally Ho Road in Arroyo Grande are fed up with cars speeding through their neighborhood.
“It's been a long-standing issue of speeding cars, a lot of vehicle traffic, and that's combined with a lot of pedestrians and kids and cyclists," said resident Nora Stone. "We want to be able to have our kids out doing all these things in a safe way.”
The speed limit on Tally Ho Road is 30 miles per hour, a little higher than the typical 25 miles per hour limit you usually see on residential streets. Despite that, neighbors say speeding is still an issue.
While I was in the area looking into neighbors’ complaints, I witnessed multiple cars drive by with speed signs clocking them at almost 40 miles per hour.
Stone said she and other parents in the area are worried.
“There's a lot of things that still need to be done to make this a safe place for everybody," she said.
Stone said in the past six years, there’s been progress with the speeding. Re-striping was done and speed feedback signs were put in place. According to city records, the speed limit was reduced from 35 to 30 miles per hour in 2023 following a speed survey.
But Stone said drivers are still too fast. She said many residents want to see the speed limit brought down to 25 miles per hour.
Dylan Staack is one of the residents looking to take action.
“I'm on the street quite a bit, and I'm yet to see any police presence that has ever enforced anything or made a difference,” he said.
Arroyo Grande City Manager Matt Downing said enforcement is difficult because police department staffing is limited.
“We have to have our patrol officers [positions] filled before we can have a motor officer out there," Downing said. "Even when we do staff an officer out in the neighborhood, people immediately see it and they slow down, but then the moment that the officer's gone, they start speeding up again.”
Downing said that because Tally Ho is what’s described as a collector road, connecting Highway 227 to the Village, and not technically a residential road, the city’s hands are tied.
“We've done everything we can to try to lower it as much as we possibly can," Downing said. "Really, it comes down to that as people, we need to slow down and stop driving so fast wherever we're going.”
Staack, Stone and other residents are continuing their efforts to reduce speeding in the neighborhood. They’ve organized painting parties to create signs encouraging drivers to slow down. Now, petitions are circulating throughout the neighborhood, calling on the city to either reclassify the road as residential or add traffic-calming measures.
“I'm not the only one that feels this way... The whole neighborhood agrees that this is an issue," Staack said. "We hope that the city will listen to the people that live here on Tally Ho that are in this community”
