Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Meet me at the corner of Gridlock and Dysfunction
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
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Read Dan's blog
Our subject today is wrong left turns, one-way entrances and the sometimes tortoise-like pace of progress over at Roanoke City Hall.
All of those items overlap in the story of why no fix has yet been made to a busy intersection in Northwest Roanoke that was identified as broken at least four years ago.
It also hints at a lot more: Why it took so many years to do anything with Victory Stadium. Why we're on amphitheater site No. 3, with still no city amphitheater. And why, four years and lots of studies since the city took back management of the Roanoke City Market Building, it's mostly the same old crummy building.
The dysfunctional intersection is right outside Roanoke Regional Airport. It's where the eastern end of Thirlane Road, Aviation Drive and Towne Square Boulevard all come together in a wholly impractical way.
The result is that shoppers can enter Towne Square Boulevard, but they can't exit it onto Aviation Drive. They have to take the often gridlocked Rutgers Street and Hershberger Road route instead.
Meanwhile, many airport-bound drivers make wrong left turns onto Thirlane instead of into the airport's entrance.
The city and the Roanoke Regional Airport Commission began talking about these problems back in 2005. The city wanted a traffic signal there, so shoppers could leave Towne Square Boulevard via Aviation Drive.
The airport wanted that end of Thirlane closed off, to prevent the wrong left turns.
But the airport didn't like the idea of the traffic signal. And city council didn't like the idea of closing that end of Thirlane.
That was two years ago.
Last fall, the airport proposed an alternative: Build a two-lane roundabout, or traffic circle, with five exits and no traffic signal.
Like the earlier proposal, that would allow drivers leaving the Townside retail shops to exit onto Aviation Drive and avoid the Rutgers-Hershberger gantlet. But no signal would be necessary.
But city traffic engineers don't like this idea because (a) there are no traffic circles in Roanoke, at least not yet; and (b) a two-lane circle might be too confusing for the roundabout virgins who live in the Roanoke Valley.
All of this came out in a small back room behind city council chambers after the Feb. 17 council meeting.
At the end of the confab, the council directed city staff to seek input from the public about closing Thirlane Road, which the old council had nixed two years ago.
"A four-way [circle] I could buy into. A five-way is just too confusing," Mayor David Bowers said Feb. 17.
At another briefing on Monday, the city staff said that some members of the public want Thirlane kept open, but they don't oppose a traffic circle.
Some council members favored the traffic circle. Staff remain opposed to it. They still want a signal. Perhaps Thirlane could be configured as a one-way exit onto Aviation Drive.
Council kicked the matter back to the airport commission.
So we are back to square one, perhaps square two, and zip has happened four years later. Which by the way is about how long it took the Allies to win World War II.
"We just need to keep working through the issues and settle on something that everyone is comfortable with," city traffic engineer Mark Jamison told me Monday.
No decision yet.
And the beat goes on.
Dan Casey's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
