AUBURN – Parents and city officials will have to look at other ways to slow Court Street traffic in front of Auburn Middle School now that the state has turned down pleas for a traffic light.

“There is just not enough traffic to meet the need for a traffic signal there,” said Steve Landry, assistant state traffic engineer. “We have guidelines we have to meet, and if we didn’t have guidelines, we’d be putting traffic lights at every intersection in Maine.”

Now, city officials are considering installing a traffic table on either side of Court Street’s intersection with Falcon Drive to make the intersection safer.

“There are other solutions, and we will take those into account,” said police Chief Phil Crowell. A police officer will direct traffic at the intersection daily during high traffic times once classes resume later this month.

“That’s something we started last year, and we’re not going to stop doing that now,” Crowell said. “And we’ll keep doing it until there is a final traffic solution in place.”

Crowell said he’s scheduled to meet with city engineers Monday afternoon. He’d like to bring a proposal for changes at the intersection back to councilors at the Sept. 2 meeting.

A group of parents began passing a petition this spring urging the City Council to make the intersection safer for students walking to school and cars and buses driving there. They blamed the intersection’s poor design for a Sept. 26 accident. A student was hit by a bus while walking to school that morning.

Councilors promised to look into the matter, and asked state officials to consider installing a traffic signal.

But Landry said the state’s traffic engineering study makes it clear that a signal won’t help. Falcon Drive does not have enough traffic volume or pedestrians to qualify for a traffic light.

“In fact, we find that accidents sometimes increase on roads where signals are added,” Landry said. “A traffic signal is not a solution to every traffic problem, and it’s not the solution in this case.”

He said speed tables, raised portions of the road, could be more effective.

“We’ve seen that work well in other communities,” he said. “If that’s done in conjunction with the crosswalk, it could be double effective. Not only would it slow traffic down, it would make the pedestrians in the crosswalk higher and that much more visible.”