Virginia Officials Regret Traffic Pattern Changes

Stoplight at Wal-Mart upsets locals [Richmond Times-Dispatch (Va.)]

A state Transportation Department official admits the agency failed to fully evaluate the consequences of a new traffic light designed to regulate traffic flow near a new Wal-Mart.

“All I can do is admit a mistake was made and do my best to correct it,” Virginia Department of Transportation District Administrator David Ogle said during an impromptu meeting with neighborhood residents Friday.

The light, scheduled to begin operating in late October, was installed last month on state Route 3 near the northern edge of Kilmarnock.

Residents of a nearby neighborhood say the light and associated turn lanes are making it difficult for them to turn off Route 3 to their homes on Hawthorne Avenue.

“The entire area should have been looked at a little more,” Ogle said.

He said he and VDOT engineers plan to meet tomorrow to consider ways to improve the entrance.

“Unfortunately for me, right now, our folks made the determination that this was an acceptable entrance” for Wal-Mart, he said.

Neighborhood residents are seeing red even before the traffic light begins working and the Wal-Mart opens.

“It’s going to be mass confusion,” Christie Caudle said of how she expects turning off Route 3 toward her home on Hawthorne is going to be once the light is switched on.

Already, drivers turning left on Hawthorne from Route 3’s northbound lanes are tempting fate. The maneuver forces motorists to cross a center turning lane designed for southbound traffic turning the opposite way into the Wal-Mart lot. On Friday, a driver blared his car horn when a northbound car signaling a left turn stalled traffic while waiting to safely cross Route 3’s southbound lanes.

Christy Steensma said she was attempting to turn Lancaster County school bus No. 7 off Route 3 onto Hawthorne on Friday morning when she met a car head-on trying to turn the opposite way into Wal-Mart.

“I had to stop to let the car around me,” she said.

Concern over the light is just one of many issues Wal-Mart’s opening this fall has created in Kilmarnock. The store and satellite stores under construction will contain 176,000 square feet of retail space, leaving many merchants in Kilmarnock’s traditional downtown worried about their future.

A few miles down Route 3, civic leaders have asked VDOT to study ways to accommodate anticipated Wal-Mart-bound traffic through the community of White Stone.

Grace Goodman pointed out that she has no gripes with Wal-Mart. She just wants to drive onto Hawthorne safely.

“Something has to be better than this,” she told Ogle.

Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or .