(A) Authority to close streets.
(1) The town employees or contractors, while repairing or improving the streets of the town, and utility company personnel, when installing, improving or repairing lines of other utility facilities in the streets, are hereby authorized as necessary, subject to control by the Board of Trustees, to close any street or section thereof to traffic during such repair, maintenance or construction.
(2) In exercising such authority, the employees, personnel or contractors shall erect or cause to be erected proper traffic-control devices and barricades to warn and notify the public that the street has been closed to traffic.
(B) Driving restrictions.
(1) When any street has been closed to traffic under the provisions of division (A) above, and traffic-control devices or barricades have been erected, it shall be unlawful for any person to drive any vehicle through, under, over or around the traffic-control devices or barricades, or otherwise to enter the closed area.
(2) The provisions of this division (B) shall not apply to persons while engaged in the construction, maintenance and repair, or to persons entering therein for the protection of lives or property.
(3) Persons having their places of residence or places of business within the closed area may travel, when possible to do so, through the area at their own risk.
(C) Construction under traffic.
(1) Whenever construction, repair or maintenance of any street or utility line or facility is being performed under traffic, the employees, personnel or contractor concerned shall erect, or cause to be erected, traffic-control devices to warn and guide the public, and every person using the street shall obey all signs, signals, markings, flaggers or other traffic-control devices which are placed to regulate, control and guide traffic through the construction or maintenance area.
(2) For the purpose of this division (C), CONSTRUCTION OR MAINTENANCE AREA means any area upon or around any street that is visibly marked as an area where construction, repair and maintenance is temporarily occurring. The construction or maintenance area also includes the lanes of highway leading up to the area upon which an activity described in this section is being performed, beginning at the point where properly posted traffic-control devices start to warn and guide the public into and through the construction or maintenance, including, but not limited to, instructions to merge from one lane into another lane, to reduce speed or to follow directions of flaggers.
(D) Removing or defacing traffic-control devices or barricades. No person shall remove, change, modify, deface or alter any traffic-control device or barricade which has been erected on any street under the provisions of this section.
(E) Liability. Nothing in this section shall relieve the town or any of its contractors, agents, servants or employees from liability for failure to perform any of the duties imposed herein.
(Prior Code, § 6-1-15) Penalty, see § 70.99