A few weeks after replacing stop lights with stop signs at a number of uptown Martinsville intersections, city officials are considering a number of traffic modifications and rolling back changes.
At their Tuesday meeting, the Martinsville City Council discussed “Downtown Walkability,” an initiative that replaced lights at four downtown intersections with stop signs with the goal of making the area more walkable and pedestrian-friendly.
Since that transition in late March, city officials have noticed issues, including difficult-to-see intersections and motorists making rolling stops or completely ignoring the signs. These, according to officials, were some of the primary complaints from uptown residents and visitors still adjusting to the change.
“I went through the city today and I hated the stop signs,” Rhonda Mills posted on Martinsville’s Facebook page. “I always travel at the speed limit with the stop lights in place. And slow down at every intersection. This is really unnecessary. WHO’s idea was this? I think having to stop at every block is going to deter traffic and shopping uptown.”
Officials expected the transition to have the opposite effect. The idea behind the change from lights to signs was to create a “speed calming” effect on the uptown area, according to Public Works Director Greg Maggard. Stop signs are meant to reduce motorists’ average speed by forcing cars to stop, while stop lights offer the chance for cars to travel the length of the uptown district without having to stop.
“What we’ve seen … people try to beat the green lights coming down Church, by the time you hit Uptown Pinball people are at 50 miles an hour,” council member Aaron Rawls said Tuesday.
During the council’s Oct. 24 meeting, Maggard discussed details of the transition.
City staff looked at which intersections would be ideal for the switch. These included the intersections of Moss and Church streets, Walnut and Church streets, Main and Bridge streets, Church and Bridge streets, and Broad and Church streets.
At the October meeting, Maggard explained that the city would use both stop signs and flashing signal lights in the initial 30 days after the change. At Tuesday’s meeting, he explained that the city had to deviate from this plan.
“We started hearing complaints about confusion. People were getting confused about the red lights, stop signs and all that,” Maggard said. “So on April 1 we actually turned the lights off, and they have been off since then.”
Rawls said he made a number of observations in the weeks since the transition.
“We have cars parked at intersections so you can’t see what’s coming your way,” he said, using the intersection of Church and Bridge streets as an example. “If you’re on the right lane, right across from the Ground Floor, and you’re at the Bridge intersection, you cannot see if there is a car coming when you have people parked at the post office, which 90% of the time someone is parked there.”
Rawls went on to describe a similar situation at the Main and Bridge streets intersection. Council members cited this intersection as an example of one that might need to revert back to stop lights.
Ultimately Rawls said he supports the idea of making the uptown area more pedestrian-friendly. And he said that over the past several weeks, the stop signs have worked to slow down traffic.
“I’m seeing this as tweaks are needed,” Rawls said. “I like it that we tried something.”
Online, motorists expressed a number of concerns ranging from pedestrian safety to sign visibility.
“Taking down stop lights just creates a mess,” Brenda Radcliff wrote on the city’s Facebook page.. “People [do not stop] at the stop signs. They just keep going. You’re not fixing a problem, you are creating more problems. That is going to increase the speeding through town.”
Others believed that the stop signs might be counterintuitive to making the area more walkable.
Maggard said the city has a number of options, which include enhancing sign visibility, adding additional signage or going back to the stop lights, which are still up but have been covered.
One of the options includes placing LED lights along the perimeter of each stop sign. This would cost $18,000, according to Maggard.
Council members plan to reconvene over the next several weeks to decide which path they will take. In the meantime, they agree that the best strategy moving forward is enforcement of the stop signs.
“We do have ways to stop people from running stop signs,” Rawls said. “One of the things that you hear from our citizens is … ‘People don’t stop at stop lights, why would they stop at stop signs?’ Look, we can’t do any sort of policy thing if we can’t even get stop signs to be adhered to.”
Mayor L.C. Jones, citing what he felt was a lack of communication with the rollout of the signs, urged staff to make sure councilors were informed of what’s happening.
“We all need to be on the same page,” Jones said.
