“In two months, we’re going to have a nightmare on our hands,” predicted Fairhope Street Committee member Cecil Christenberry, speaking of the July opening of the new Wal-Mart. “Triple that nightmare,” he added when considering the August re-opening of nearby schools.
Discouraging words from this usually upbeat Fairhope city councilman and local business owner. And why is he so glum? He’d just heard the traffic study report from the city’s transportation consultants, Neel-Schaffer, Inc. and it was no happy tale. The about-to-open big-box store sits at the intersection of two already over-burdened and slow-moving streets: Fairhope Avenue and Alabama 181.
Fairhope Avenue is the major east-west link in Fairhope – running from Mobile Bay, through downtown to well outside the eastern city limits. Within Fairhope it is lined with homes, shops, churches, schools and strip malls. For people living in subdivisions in the county beyond the new Wal-Mart, it is the route to downtown and the link to US 98 and I-10.
The transportation study has identified the intersections of Fairhope Avenue with AL 181 (Wal-Mart Ground Zero), Bishop Road and US 98 as the locations most urgently needing improvement to increase traffic flow. An example of the current (pre-Wal-Mart opening) situation is the often quarter mile line of cars trying to get through the intersection with US 98. Sitting through multiple sequences of the traffic signal is common, if not expected. This may not be another nightmare, but it’s at least a bad dream.
The other route, Alabama 181, runs parallel to the usually crowded US 98 and is the “relief” road for that highway. Someday (maybe in six years according to ALDOT) it will be widened into a divided thoroughfare, going from Weeks Bay to I-10. Right now – and apparently for a good number of years to come – it is just a narrow country road, but with dozens of new subdivisions poised to spew hundreds, if not thousands of additional cars each day onto its already traffic-choked lanes. It’s a nightmare in itself, even before adding the local impact of a new Wal-Mart.
So while Councilman Christenberry considers our collective transportation nightmares and calls for immediate action to start the projects that will provide some relief, what do we see on the drawing boards for improving traffic flow in Fairhope? A plan for widening Fairhope Avenue? Nope. How about improving traffic flow around the new Big-box store? Nothing that hasn’t already been done (new turn lanes at the intersection and at parking lot entrances) – but to be fair, most improvements on AL 181 are in the state’s hands. Anything to fix the reported problems at Bishop Road? No, nothing. Can’t find a thing.
But wait – here’s a transportation project that’s just been approved. Nothing to do with anybody’s nightmares – but appears to be the realization of one of Mayor Kant’s dreams. It’s innovative. It’s elegant. It’s oh-so-Old World. It’s something people down South don’t know about. IT”S A ROUNDABOUT. And it’s going to be built on the west side of town, near St. James Episcopal church, where Section Street, Scenic 98, Veteran’s Parkway and Route 104 converge.
Now before you readers get all carried away in enthusiasm for Mayor Kant’s “discovery,” recognize that what he’s talking about is a TRAFFIC CIRCLE. Columbus, Georgia, had one back when I was in grammar school (just after horseless carriages became commonplace). Last time I was there I noticed the traffic circle had been replaced by a conventional cross-type intersection with a traffic light. The only innovation the mayor has brought to Fairhope is the name. Instead of calling it a good-old American traffic circle (or even by the New England name: Rotary), he’s imported a British term – “Roundabout” – to hype his project.
But by any name it’s just a circle with streets radiating from it and by any name the one in Fairhope will be nowhere near the problem streets and intersections Cecil Christenberry (and lots of others) have nightmares over. The planning staff says cost of installing the traffic circle in Fairhope is about four-times what a traffic signal at that location would cost (with one critic noting it really is six-times more, when you include the cost of removing it). And even its supporters admit traffic circles are generally unpopular with drivers and take time to adjust to (likely with crashes dotting the learning curve). But it’s not all negative – the center of the circle does provide a great location for shrubs and flowers.
Now all my fussing over this mayoral pet-project is not to suggest that if it weren’t being built, the traffic nightmare could be fixed. It’s just that the “Roundabout” project is a symptom of an insufficient focus on our real traffic problems. Councilman Christenberry has (again) raised the alarm on serious safety and quality-of-life problems in Fairhope and the Eastern Shore, but it appears his fellow council members and the mayor and his staff are doing no more than politely acknowledging his concerns.
Admittedly, fixes aren’t quick or easy. Road construction is slow and expensive – and often out of local control. No-growth and even slow-growth measures are broadly unpopular and usually end up in court. Impact fees collected from developers have only recently been introduced and adding pay-as-you-grow for transportation infrastructure may be hard.
Ideally these and other measures designed to avoid accidents, reduce travel delays and avoid traffic jams should have been examined and selectively implemented the better part of a decade ago. But even a late start is better than letting traffic problems continue to grow. Our community needs to insist on action now or we’ll all be facing some seriously scary stuff down the road.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
Archives
Jubilee
