When wife Barbara and I moved from Los Angeles to Fairhope, we marveled at how little traffic there was. Notwithstanding the warnings of the local folks about avoiding “rush hour” (in 2002 it was more like “rush 20 minutes”), we drove anywhere and everywhere at anytime and every hour. What freedom, what bliss.
Coming up on five years later, we find ourselves avoiding certain intersections (like Fairhope’s “Triangle” and Daphne’s “Malfunction Junction”) and certain times and places (like any street around a school during delivery and pickup each weekday morning and afternoon), just like we did in LA (left coast LA, that is).
While Lower Alabama traffic conditions are orders of magnitude less crowded and stressful than those in the other LA, it sure is an unwelcome change – but one that should be a surprise to no one.
Every year since our arrival, literally thousands of new families have moved to the Eastern Shore. As the beaches have become more condo-ized and residential density in some water front locations seem to be approaching that of New York City, traffic passing through the ESho communities heading south has also added to the vehicle load. Trucks and cement mixers, tractor trailers and equipment transporters, all on the road in support of the building boom, also contribute to the traffic density. As anyone driving around here can tell you, its getting really slow out there. And the reason is in the numbers.
During this same period, the biggest change in the local road network was the re-designation of County Road 27 as State Route 181 – new sign, same two-lane. Worse, the announced plan to widen the newly named road has resulted in new subdivisions springing up along it like mushrooms. Then too, there is a new regional destination “Life Style Center” at the north end and a Wal-Mart under construction in the middle.
Transportation engineers currently describe Highway 98 as carrying traffic well beyond its designed capacity, with increased accidents the most quantifiable result of this condition. In Fairhope, the city is looking at some more traffic signals on its segment of 98, a new one-way entrance into the old downtown district and maybe a first: a real traffic circle at 104 and Scenic 98. All this is intended to slow traffic down and make crossing the highway easier and safer.
Daphne has a different problem and they are looking at trying to get increased throughput. But with the infamous “Malfunction Junction” (US 98 and Main Street in Daphne) in the middle of the main north-south artery, flow is more like a clot. Cars now back up the better part of a mile during the morning and afternoon peak travel times. The jumble of re-aligned streets at that location was arrived at as a fix to a previous jumble of streets at the same spot. I can’t tell if the current problem is the result of a bad plan or a growth of traffic beyond what was planned for. In either case, reducing the volume of traffic passing that point would sure help.
The new wider 181 is supposed to relieve traffic on 98, but as things are going now, traffic load is coming a lot faster than added lanes – in fact high traffic density has already arrived on 181, while building the new wider, higher capacity 181 has yet to start. In fact access from existing subdivisions along 181 is so hazardous that five more traffic signals have been requested between Fairhope and I-10; this is on a route that was once described by Daphne’s mayor as designed to be a “Thruway.”
The next great hope to unclog north-south roads along the Eastern Shore is a continuous County Road 13, connecting to the Interstate. Currently 13 is useful only for local travel – the Auburn agriculture experimental station sprawls across the road’s path from County Road 104 in Fairhope to just south of County Road 64 in Daphne. A year or so ago it looked as if the university would sell the land to allow connection of the two parts of the road. No such luck – just before it was signed and sealed, a member of the Fairhope City Council put the kibosh on the deal. No access and the money went elsewhere. Fortunately the plan was recently resuscitated and all parties agreed to the sale. Plans – but not the actual road – are underway again.
And this brings me to the crux of the problem with traffic and travel on the Eastern Shore. While subdivisions and shopping centers are being approved and built, roads are not. This is a clear and present problem. A moratorium on subdivision approvals in Fairhope or even a general slowdown in housing construction – a hot market cooling to…let’s say a tepid one – isn’t going to do much to solve it. Things will continue to get worse, just at a slightly slower rate. So what’s the solution?
Other than having started the upgrading of the north-south road network on the Eastern Shore about five years ago, there is no neat, quick fix. But given where we are now, what has to be done is make these traffic improvements an urgent priority. They cannot be treated as just another road project that can be delayed or even stopped by a little opposition here or a quietly dropped hint of displeasure there.
It’s a critical need – not just to make my morning trip to Coffee Loft for a frothy caramel latte faster and less stressful – but to fill community-wide quality-of-life and safety needs.
And if you have any lingering doubts about the validity of this statement, think ….. hurricane.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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