Citizen complaints of cut-through traffic trumped a $11,982 professional traffic study recommending a dedicated left-turn signal from Bee Cave Road onto Red Bud Trail at last week’s city council meeting.

Previous studies saw an average of 7.75 accidents per year, beginning in 2006, at the intersection. The most recent study determined that of the 13,815 cars traveling eastbound along Bee Cave Road from 6:45-9 a.m., only 2.6 percent used Red Bud Trail as a cut through. Despite these numbers, and a unanimous recommendation from the transportation committee, council members Andrew Schwartz, Davin Fillpot and Spencer Stevens voted against the signal.

“The left-turn lane goes in, and people are off the main traffic flow, so I think the safety concern gets alleviated,” Stevens said. “If it maintains, and we see that it’s a big safety concern, then maybe we consider installing a left-turn signal. It’s easier than putting the genie back in the bottle.”

While Schwartz had said at a previous meeting on the topic that he’d like to see the council err on the side of safety, he said he voted against the signal because while he personally wanted to see it there, the residents of Red Bud Trail obviously did not.

Fillpot said he’d been witness to the cut-through traffic and believed the turn signal would only serve to amplify the problem.

“Since we did the study, and the result of that study said [the cut-through traffic] won’t change, we could throw it out and not listen to the study, or we could listen to it,” Council member Cindy Probst said. “I’d prefer to see the turn signal.”

Probst also said it would be possible to prohibit the left turns during any heavy traffic hours in order to help reduce the cut-through problem.

Councilman Stan Graham agreed, saying that the impending center turn lane could make the yielding turn even more dangerous as drivers would now be watching three lanes instead of two.

“With regard to Red Bud, it was the unanimous opinion of the [transportation] commission that regardless of cut-through that Red Bud Trail intersection represents a safety issue,” Transportation Commission President Gary Wachs told the council at the beginning of the meeting. “I’ve driven past there frequently and seen many close calls, if not accidents. It makes sense from a safety perspective. If it turns out this encourages cut-through at that intersection, then we can discuss other traffic calming measures.”

He also said that the commission believed the city should hold off on any discussion of cut through traffic until all of the upgrades to Bee Cave Road have been completed and they get a better idea of the scope of the problem. And while he agreed with the findings of the study, he said he would have liked to see the data distributed over time, instead of an average of all the cars over the studied period.

“The 270 homes that live in that area are entitled to have the traffic limited to the people who live there,” argued 125 Red Bud Trail resident David Cohen.

He suggested putting up a “no through traffic” sign and license-plate recording cameras at either end of the road for law enforcement to use, but both Mayor Dave Claunch and City Attorney Alan Bojorquez said it was illegal to keep people off of public streets.