Deer herd causes safety concerns

BURBANK — Hillside District residents say they are seeing more deer than usual roaming around Keystone Street at the foot of the Verdugo Mountains, prompting concerns about traffic safety in the neighborhood.

"This is the most we have ever had," said resident Helen Schweiger, who has lived in the Hillside District for more than 30 years.

Wandering deer are spotted around Keystone every day, sometimes twice a day, she said. The deer's increased presence, coupled with passing vehicles that often travel at high speeds, have neighbors worried about the safety of both drivers and wildlife, she said.

"The deer are so beautiful and I would hate to see any of them hurt," she said. "And people would definitely get hurt too if they ran into them."

In response to neighbors' concerns, the Burbank Police Department's Traffic Division set up a radar trailer on Keystone to survey the speed and volume of vehicle travel on Keystone, Det. Doug Brown said.

The radar recorded 7,562 vehicles on Keystone between Nov. 7 and 8, traveling at an average speed of 24 miles per hour, he said. The maximum speed recorded was 43 miles per hour.

"The trailer has two effects: No. 1, we get an idea of speed on the street," he said. "But it does have an effect on cars and when [drivers] see it, they have a tendency to slow down. So the results don't mean that people aren't speeding, it just means that the average of cars that we collected on that day weren't."

Though there are no prior traffic volume figures to compare to the most recent count, the building of more homes in area suggests that traffic activity has increased, he said.

A federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices does not define standards for installing animal crossing signs, beyond saying that signs can be placed in areas where there are frequent animal crossings, city traffic engineer Ken Johnson said.

Citing a lack of deer-vehicle collisions in Burbank, Johnson initially recommended that animal crossing signs are unnecessary.

"We try to minimize the number of signs on a street since an over-proliferation of the devices will tend to decrease driver awareness of important signs," he said.

Councilman David Gordon asked city staff on Tuesday to return to the council with information about the feasibility of installing animal crossing signs in the area.