Drivers pass by orange flags attached to two new stop signs near the intersection of 11th and Mississippi streets in this file photo from June. According to city records, stolen signs add up to 0,000 in taxpayer losses each year.

Police are busy pulling over people running through new stop signs posted along Mississippi Street near Memorial Stadium.

Not that they’re trying to cash in on the public’s unfamiliarity.

Instead, officers were busy issuing warnings Friday at the corner of 11th and Mississippi streets, where orange flags affixed to the new signs’ poles sometimes weren’t enough to alert drivers to the changes ahead.

“We understand there is a little bit of a learning curve here,” said Capt. Schuyler Bailey, of the KU Public Safety Office, which oversees the Kansas University police. “We want to give people time to understand that the signs are up.”

Folks had better get used to them.

The signs went up recently in response to construction of a nearby hotel. The Oread Inn project has forced closure of a section of Indiana Street nearby, and developers asked for a few traffic-control changes to help address anticipated problems with getting heavy trucks, buses and other traffic through the area and its inevitable detours.

Chuck Soules, the city’s director of public works, said safety also was a prime concern. Workers digging a massive hole for an underground parking garage at the hotel reported seeing the ground around them “shaking” as buses rumbled past, prompting swift requests for the road closure and other signs to be posted nearby.

The city hopes to remove the new stop signs, and reopen Indiana Street, once the safety concerns at the construction site are satisfied, Soules said. Officials now anticipate a relative return to normal in August or September.

“This is temporary, until the safety issues with the project get resolved,” Soules said. “That basically means they need to get some work done, so the workers aren’t in danger. Then we’ll get it opened again.”

Until then, KU student Michael Novorr fully anticipates seeing more of what he’s been treated to for the past few days outside the bedroom window of his place at Stadium View Apartments.

From his perch at the northeast corner of the intersection, he’s seen car after truck after SUV run the stop signs. Officers posted at the intersection also have gotten an earful from frustrated motorists.

Novorr’s convinced the warnings won’t last for long.

“I just see it as another way to get revenue for the city,” said Novorr, a junior studying history. “I don’t really see it as helping anyone out.”