Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290094
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN AND KEN SINGLETARY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
Take seasonal holiday-shopping traffic, stir in highway-construction projects, mix well with routine commuter traffic patterns and a mass student exodus.
The result: Overbaked nerves at Malfunction Junction, a new catch-phrase for "downtown New River Valley," where Peppers Ferry Road (Virginia 114) meets U.S. 460 and traffic often slows to a standstill.
Motorists who daily run the 10-mile gauntlet on Peppers Ferry Road from New River Valley Mall to U.S. 11 in Fairlawn have experienced heightened levels of traffic congestion and internal frustration this year.
The traffic is more than a nuisance.
Since Thanksgiving, two motorists died eight days apart in wrecks on the same stretch of Peppers Ferry Road near the Vicker community. Both wrecks happened when one vehicle strayed into the path of another coming the opposite way on the busy two-lane road.
Has traffic really increased that dramatically with the addition of the New River Valley Mall, Kmart, Lowe's, Wal-Mart and numerous smaller stores in the area? Or does it just seem that way?
"The traffic counts have been rollercoastering on 114 for a good while," said Dan Brugh, local resident engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation.
At first, traffic increased as a retail center began to develop in the Virginia 114-U.S. 460 corridor, but then was offset by layoffs at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant and the closing of the AT&T plant.
With the commercial boom in the area, however, the number of cars traveling a part of the road jumped by more than 60 percent from 1989 to 1993. The 11,000 cars that passed daily down Peppers Ferry Road in 1989 grew in four years to 18,000 traveling the busy first mile within the town limits.
The state Transportation Department plans in 1998 to widen to four lanes the mile stretch of Peppers Ferry Road that is in Christiansburg. Eventually, the state will probably consider widening the whole road, Brugh said.
But for now, Montgomery County is spending its highway money on other road projects, such as improving the even more traveled U.S. 460 between Blacksburg and Christiansburg and the planned Alternative 3A, which will allow drivers to bypass 460's busiest stretch.
Peppers Ferry Road is "something I've really been concerned with," said Ann Hess, a former chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors who lives in a subdivision off the road.
An organizer of the 114 Citizens' Network, Hess is concerned the road-widening project could exacerbate traffic problems instead of improve them, because drivers won't want to slow down when the road narrows to two lanes.
In response to recent traffic accidents on Peppers Ferry Road, members of the Belmont II Ruritan Club are asking that the road's speed limit be lowered from 55 mph to 45 mph.
Some aspects of Peppers Ferry Road that make it dangerous - the fact that it's straight making some drivers careless - mean traffic on the road may remain a perennial problem, said Chuck Adkins, secretary of the club. But "I think a lower speed limit would help.
"Some people just kind of relax and open up through that straight stretch there" near Virginia 659 (Vicker Switch Road) where two fatal accidents recently occurred, said Adkins. "If you're not paying attention, it's very dangerous." Adkins lives farther out the road near another dangerous spot - the intersection of Peppers Ferry and Prices Fork roads that has a new stoplight.
Adding to the problem is "some of us travel so much, [driving] becomes boring to us," especially on familiar roads.
But some people doubt that lowering the speed limit is the answer to the traffic accident problem.
Brugh's office will conduct a speed study next month, but he said he did not think that lowering the speed was the solution.
"You can blame these fatalities on speed, but most of the time, it's driver error or inattention," said Montgomery County Sheriff Ken Phipps.
State statistics back the sheriff and Brugh. In 185 accidents since 1990, only five were attributed to driver speed while 125 were attributed to driver or pedestrian inattention.
Posting an unusually low speed limit often leads to the probability of creating more accidents, Brugh said. A wider differential in speed between those who choose to obey the law and those who don't creates more of a chance an accident will happen when a faster driver becomes frustrated with a slower one, Brugh said.
Ricky Widner, who lives in the 3100 block of Peppers Ferry Road, has seen many accidents in the four years he's lived in the community. The weekend following Thanksgiving, he helped pull to safety a woman whose mother was killed in a two-vehicle collision.
"I think it's always been a hectic place to get in and out," Widner said. "I notice traffic's slowing" since a four-way traffic light was installed at the Prices Fork Road intersection which is nearby.
But still, cars whizzing by at speeds of 60 or 70 mph isn't an uncommon sight, Widner said.
"I'd like to see them make it 45 all the way through there," instead of just in in the corporate limits, which stops near the Department of Motor Vehicles office.
Residents like Adkins, Hess and Widner aren't the only ones worried.
"What's it going to take to get [safety measures] under way?" on Peppers Ferry Road, asked Tom Sheets, manager of the New River Valley Mall. "It certainly needs to be upgraded and widened."
For Adkins, safety on Peppers Ferry Road is personal. He has a son who is beginning to drive.
"As soon as he steps out of the door, I begin worrying."
by CNB