By Adam Studzinski

BLOOMINGTON – The City of Bloomington is considering hiring a traffic engineer.

Public Works Director Jim Karch said the position could be a necessity as the city grows and begins diving into more street projects.

“The traffic engineer kind of evaluates that high level policy of where do we as a community go with things like speed limits, complete streets impacts, or even, how do we accommodate buses?” said Karch. “How do we look at conveying traffic? How do we look at conveying pedestrians?”

Karch added high level policy considerations are not the only reason he feels the position is crucial.

“We need the day-to-day work done as well. We have to be able to address all the different requests,” said Karch. “There are so many different parking requests. There is signal timing. There is a lot of different issues, such as stop sign requests.”

The city plans to discuss creating the position as it works through the budgeting process for the next fiscal year. Karch added Bloomington did have similar traffic positions before 2009, but when those employees retired they were not replaced.

Adam Studzinski can be reached at [email protected].