Lexington is looking outside its town limits for answers on reducing traffic
To understand the traffic Lexington drivers have to contend with, you might have to look at drivers coming from well outside the town limits. At least that’s the path town officials are taking.
Lexington County Council last month approved spending $49,000 from C Funds to perform traffic analysis at seven intersections outside the town limits. Those intersections are:
- Barr Road at Rawl Road
- U.S. 1 at Barr Road
- U.S. 378 at Charter Oak Road/St Peters Road
- U.S. 1 at Pisgah Church Road/Charter Oak Road
- Barr Road at Pisgah Church Road
- Old Cherokee Road at Maxie Road
- S.C. 6 at Pilgrim Church Road
It’s all part of Lexington’s continuing plan to improve traffic around town, now reaching out beyond the town limits to study problematic traffic patterns that might feed into the town itself.
Town transportation director Randy Edwards said the town was already looking at four other busy intersections in the surrounding area, but sought additional funding from the county to complete the others.
“The goal is to put a belt and suspenders on Greater Lexington,” Edwards said, drawing an area from Longs Pond Road in the west and Old Cherokee Road in the north to Corley Mill Road and Interstate 20 in the east. “We tried to look at what the traffic box is that we can look at, because our internal traffic is affected by traffic in that box.”
The town completed studies of traffic patterns at each intersection in the spring, but needed the additional funding to complete the analysis, Edwards explained.
He said the local transportation improvement plan, or LTIP, decides where work is needed with “criteria based on crashes, volume of traffic, all the factors traffic geeks look at.” When examining traffic flows at an intersection, “100 seconds is a reasonable delay, and 300 seconds is not. And with the accumulation of each vehicle, you can say each vehicle is delayed a certain amount.” “There are people who have master’s degrees in levels of service for an intersection,” he said.
CHA Consulting is working with Lexington on the latest version of the plan.
When Lexington passed its first local transportation improvement plan back in 2017, it examined 29 different intersections around town, 16 of which have received at least some improvement work. Another 40 areas have seen improvements put in by private developers as part of a new development. In all, $6.9 million worth of projects have been identified, programmed and constructed, he said.
Mayor Hazel Livingston said the first round of transportation planning was crucial in improving the once backup-prone intersection of Mineral Springs and Sunset Boulevard.
“Any time planning for projects, it’s a good thing,” Livingston said. “That’s the reason why this time we have quite a few outside the town limits. That way we can do all we can do to plan ahead.”
Now, the town is putting together a list for a second LTIP, which, among other things will allow Lexington to calculate a new traffic impact fee. Edwards said he plans to present the proposal to the town’s traffic committee for approval in November. In total, 35 intersections could be slated for improvement in the next round of the LTIP, he said.
Since Lexington is currently looking at intersections outside the town limits, it would require coordination with Lexington County to make any improvements there. But the data gathered will still be useful in understanding traffic flows coming into Lexington.
“In town, I would have authority, so we can have a higher standard, working in partnership with DOT as these things come along,” he said.
Livingston was glad to get the county funding to move forward with the projects, and said she hopes the second round of the LTIP is as successful as the first.
“I’ll continue push for all the money we can find to improve it,” the mayor said.
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