After more than an hour of discussion between State College Borough Council members and community members, the council voted 5-2 for approving a $13,000 traffic calming plan for the Highlands Neighborhood at last night's meeting.

The council will narrow travel lanes to 10 feet on South Garner Street from Westerly Parkway to Beaver Avenue by repainting the lines, which are currently more than 11 feet apart.

The plan also includes placing eight 3.5-inch speed humps on Foster Avenue, Prospect Avenue and Hamilton Avenue.

Two of those speed humps will be installed on Foster Avenue, where the speed limit is 25 mph, even though a traffic study showed that the average speed did not exceed 10 mph over the limit.

Speed control needs to be enforced when the average speed reaches 10 mph over the limit.

Despite the recommendation of borough staff to exclude the speed humps on Foster Avenue from the vote, Borough Council's approval sided with Borough Council member Cathy Dauler's initial resolve.

"If the residents feel that we should be doing something on Foster, then we should listen to them," she said. "The people who actually live in the neighborhood know what the traffic is like more than anybody."

Off-Campus Student Union President Ryan Bennington appeared before Borough Council, stating he didn't think many students were aware of the traffic issues.

"There really wasn't much student input on this project," he said. "We do in fact spend a lot of money on downtown State College."

The humps will be placed between Hetzel Street and Garner Street and between High Street and University Drive.

They will be added in an effort to calm residents who have been addressing concerns about speeding cars in the area since September 2004.

"We have lots of school children walking to and from school or walking from school buses," Highlands Civic Association President Bob Seibel said, citing that 300 cars speed through the area daily. "I don't think that's safe."

Borough Council also plans to slow down Garner Street with transverse markings, which are similar to rumble strips except not as jolting, Ron Seybert Jr., a representative of the project's hired firm, Trans Associates, said.

"This is something about making the neighborhood livable and desirable," he said.

Although Borough Council at first planned to postpone voting on the Foster Avenue humps, its approval last night followed a plan voted on by the transportation commission in August.

That plan had already included hours of input from residents.

The plan also calls for monitoring Irvin, Waring and McCormick avenues and issuing traffic mitigation as needed.

In other business, Borough Council agreed to discuss the issues of repealing the business privilege tax and updating fire safety code amendments at a 7:30 p.m. work session Monday.