York Town News
Residents of private roads plagued by heavy traffic and speeders
By Melissa Wood
YORK - Two weeks ago, Rogers Road resident Kay Dalli wrote a letter to The Independent mourning the loss of a neighbor's dog that had been hit by a speeding vehicle.The car, wrote Dalli, which was traveling 40 mph instead of the posted 15 mph limit, did not even slow down after striking the pet.
"Coward that you are, you looked in your rearview mirror, then drove even faster," wrote Dalli, who passed away on Feb. 28. "What you did was awful. You saw his owner run to pick up his little pal."
Dalli and another neighbor, Barbara Smith, who wrote a letter to the paper the following week about problems with speeders on the road, had little other recourse because Rogers Road is a private road.
Although the condition of most private roads are usually far below that of town roads and residents must pay the expense of the wear and tear from speeders and heavy usage, they can't stop people from using these back roads as shortcuts, and police cannot pull over speeders on private roads.
"The state doesn't allow enforcement," said York Police Capt. Kevin LeConte. "If there is not a public right-of-way, we can't do enforcement."
Craig Charron, president of the Rogers Road Association, said the group has met with police and town officials. They have posted "No Trespassing" and 15 mph speed limit signs and can write down the license plates of speeding cars.
"There's really nothing legally more we can do about it," said Charron. "We ask for their advice, and we try and follow that advice."
Charron said speeding vehicles create big dust clouds behind them on the dirt road. He said the increase of vehicles has caused greater erosion on the dirt road, costing residents more out-of-pocket expenses on not only maintenance but also materials and fuel, which are also rising in price. High traffic can be costly for homeowners on private roads since the residents pay for all upkeep and maintenance of these roads, making sure they are passable for emergency vehicles.
"Everyone who lives on the road is responsible," he said.
Smith, who is the former secretary of the Rogers Road Association, said she had been in communication with the town assessor's office last year, trying to get the road taken off maps but was told there was nothing the town could do about that.
"They pretty much said you guys are on your own," said Smith.
Smith said she was concerned that residents can also be sued for damages if a car is in an accident on the road.
"After I made a lot of noise last winter, the association put up some signs that said no trespassing," said Smith. "We could have been found liable."
There is often confusion about roads from the time they are first constructed, explained Town Planner Steve Burns, because there are two different sets of standards in town.
First, roads have to meet certain conditions in order for property owners to obtain building permits. For instance, if a developer wants to construct a road for two houses, the road must be 12 feet wide. For three or four houses, the road must be 18 feet wide, and for a subdivision of five or more houses, it must be 20 feet wide.
However, in order for a road to be accepted as a town road, it must meet much tougher standards under the road acceptance ordinance, which is overseen by the Department of Public Works. These standards include specifications for gravel and concrete, a public right-of-way of at least 20 feet on each side of the center line, culverts for drainage and cul-de-sacs for dead-end roads.
And, even though the Planning Board may waive a specification for a subdivision, the standards will still need to be upheld if property owners want the road to go public.
For the town to accept a road, it must be "a well-designed, well-cast road, that is not going to be a maintenance nightmare for the town if we take control of it," said Burns, who added that road issues are big right now for the town, which has drafted an update to the road acceptance ordinance.
"If a road is very deficient there's no real reason for the taxpayers to take it over and pay for it," he said.
If a road stays private, the property owners form a road association to collect money for maintenance. Burns said he knows of one private road that split up into two associations and a resident came into his office in tears because neighbors could not agree on the type of snowplowing. One half of the road preferred two swipes from the snowplow, which means one half of the road is crowned, rising in the middle, and neighbors on the other half of the road preferred one swipe from the snowplow, which means that half of the road is flat.
Although the town no longer prints street maps, all of the town's roads, public and private, appear on its online database found at http://gis.yorkmaine.org/website/yorkims2/. The site gets on average 1,000 hits per week, according to York GIS Manager Brett Horr, who said the number was impressive for a town with a year-round population of just 14,000.
Private roads, represented by light blues lines on the database, are mostly found in York Beach. They can also be spotted around town because their road signs are green instead of the white signs used for town-owned roads
Burns said he would rather the town not produce any maps before it starts taking roads off the database. He said the online maps are important for both emergency vehicle responses to 911 calls and for town planning purposes.
"Our obligation is to make sure what's where," Burns said. "The system will not work if we don't have accurate and complete information."
