City at a crossroads

Tens of thousands of cars zip daily through Waynesboro’s West End, where 10 intersections along Rosser Avenue and West Main Street are among the city’s most dangerous, according to 2007 statistics.

While some short-term, and less-costly, fixes are possible, many will take millions of dollars — and several years — to correct, city officials say.

Officials rate two intersections — Hopeman Parkway-Poplar Avenue and Rosser Avenue-Lew Dewitt Boulevard — as unstable and congested with delays of 55 to 80 seconds per vehicle.

City Planner Jim Shaw has described the intersection where Lew Dewitt, Rosser and Windigrove meet as “the worst intersection in town right now.” He said too many cars are stacked in all four directions and people trying to get in the traffic flow cannot do so because the line of cars trying to do so backs up at the light.

Along West Main Street, City Planner Terry Short, who also works for the Virginia Department of Transportation, says there are 32 points of conflict per new intersection.

According to VDOT, a conflict point is an area where intersecting traffic either merges, diverges or crosses. “Each conflict point is a potential collision,” it says.

In the next 10 years, conditions are expected to worsen, with stop-and-go traffic delaying vehicles by more than 80 seconds at a minimum of five points along Rosser Avenue, at two other locations on Lew Dewitt and one on Hopeman.

The number of crashes in the city have remained relatively steady since 2000, in the mid-400s yearly, even with the upswing in West End development. In 2007, most of the 497 accidents city-wide occurred along Rosser, West Main Street and Lew Dewitt.

“What we’ve seen year-to-year is that more traffic is commensurate with more business,” Waynesboro police Sgt. Kelly Walker said. “And because of the increase in traffic, accidents go up exponentially with that.”

While the city has a slew of recommendations to make improvements on roads across the city, they come with a $24.8 million price tag for improvements along Rosser, West Main, Lew Dewitt and Hopeman Parkway. Some of those pricey improvements involve widening Delphine Avenue and Rosser to urban, four-lane divided roadways and reconstructing other trouble spots to standard urban, two-lane roadways.

The cost could be shared by the city, the Virginia Department of Transportation, developers and state money.

City officials, such as Vice Mayor Frank Lucente, have advocated low-cost solutions such as adjusting signal timing, signage or altering line markings on the roads as ways to reduce accidents.

Shaw said signal work along Rosser Avenue is ongoing with the Virginia Department of Transportation and the city’s Public Works Department. Signal timing in that area, along with the number of signals, are issues that spark many complaints.

“It’s a balance of trying to make sure the main thoroughfares are open, but [also] making sure the traffic stacking up on the side streets can access the thoroughfares,” Shaw said.

Appropriate signage can help, according to Walker, though it can also pose its own problems.

Walker said the easiest way to reduce accidents is for motorists to follow posted speed limits and to pay attention to their surroundings. He said it is hard to generalize what should be done at problem intersections because each has to be studied “and the appropriate course of action has to be implemented for that.”

The potential for accidents, Walker said, increases “if you’re speeding and you’re a little inattentive.”

Traffic flow also has to be controlled, as people coming off Interstate 64 are traveling at a high rate of speed before slowing down to merge onto Rosser, Shaw said.

“To some extent, you concede a level of service,” Shaw said. “More traffic means more congestion, and, as a traffic engineer, a traffic planner, you try to establish what is an acceptable level of service.”