When it comes to complaints, Jean Lundahl has heard them all. “Curbs, garbage, animals — when someone’s unhappy, this is the first place they call,” says Lundahl, who fields incoming calls and greets visitors at Meadville City Building’s front desk.

What she hasn’t heard, however, is a single complaint about the new traffic pattern at the south end of the city’s Diamond Park. In fact, the silence has been downright deafening when it comes to the 90-day trial period now entering its third week, “Not one comment,” the city’s receptionist said Friday. “Not a one.”

Ditto for City Clerk Janet Niedermeyer, whose office next to the main entrance is often the first stop for many of the visitors and city employees entering the building.

Ditto again for Deb Berasi, the first voice callers to City Manager Joe Chriest’s office usually hear.

And ditto yet again for Meadville Police Department’s dispatchers, who hear about just about everything else on a regular basis. “We’ve had no accidents — or any other calls related to the change,” Assistant Chief Tom Liscinski told the Tribune.

In June, City Council members gave an enthusiastic go-ahead to Chriest to conduct the trial, which has temporarily replaced the three traffic lights guarding the intersection of South Main and Chestnut streets and Diamond Park with stop and yield signs as well as approximately a million bright orange free-standing devices known as lane delineators.

While a flurry of negative responses greeted pre-trial announcements, things quieted down as soon as the trial period actually started.

Moving on through

Mayor Richard Friedberg has been keeping an eye on things from the front window of his Chestnut Street business, which overlooks the intersection. “The first day, people were being overly cautious,” he said. “Now, they’re doing it and it’s going smoothly.”

As for public comment, “I was just out there talking to somebody who works for a business,” he said Friday. “He says it certainly makes things more efficient for him — it speeds up the waiting time.”

“I’m hearing, surprisingly, more positive comments than I thought I would,” Councilmember Christopher Soff said Friday. “People who normally don’t say anything about city issues are telling me — or telling my wife to tell me or even telling my daughter to tell me — that they love it.”

While he hasn’t gotten any calls either way, Councilmember Leroy Stearns has had two individuals express concerns in person about no longer being able to proceed west along Chestnut Street without circling the Diamond. “If the light were still there and the light would be green, it would be quicker,” Stearns said Friday. “But if the light’s there and it’s red, it takes the same amount of time.”

Councilmembers Cheryl Burkey, who was an outspoken advocate of the trial long before it began, and Jason Amory, who also supported the change early on, both expressed their approval of the change during a recent city council study session. “It was about time,” Burkey said, noting that she now drives through the intersection with a smile.

“I love it,” Soff said, speaking from a personal perspective. “For me, traffic flows very easily. I understand it. And I like not having to sit at any one of the three lights where I had to sit and wait before.”