It’s still a stupid stoplight

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

I wrote a year ago or so about the Stupid Downtown Waynesboro Stoplight.
You know the one. Sits there at the intersection of Main and Wayne. Takes forever and a daggone day to cycle folks through.
Everybody I know who has to drive through downtown to get where they’re going goes out of their way to avoid it.
Heck, I live downtown, and I drive around it when I can.
It claimed its first victim the other morning.

I didn’t catch her name, but a lady using the cut-through in front of my house got hit head-on by a van.
Didn’t seem like there were any serious injuries, though her car was pretty heavily damaged.
The street, Church Street, is a popular cut-through because if you’re driving east on Main Street, you can turn left onto Church at the top of the hill before you end up in No Man’s Land at the bottom and still get to where you’re going in decent time, and if you’re good, you can do so without even stopping.

Problem is, the street is narrow, and when cars park on the street on either side, as is often done out here, well, it gets to be even more an issue.
We get more than our fair share of traffic heading downtown these days because of the light that often backs vehicles up past the front door of my house many times in the afternoon.
For those who know Downtown Waynesboro well enough, the front door to my house is basically the starting line to the annual Soap Box Derby.
So yeah, we’re pretty far back from the light – far enough back that cars should not be lined up waiting for green.

City leaders have been talking about what they can do to get the situation down the street resolved.
But note how I indicated above that I wrote about this a year ago or so now.
I guess what I’m saying is that they’ve been taking their sweet time, if you’re asking me about the matter.

  

Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.

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