MARTINSVILLE, Va. – If you live, work, or even just pass through Uptown Martinsville, you’re going to want to hit the brakes.
Starting on May 5, the city is flipping the script on traffic flow. Big changes are coming to the flow of traffic in Uptown Martinsville, and city leaders say it’s all about slowing things down.
Kendall Davis, public information officer for Martinsville, said, “We are doing this to really enhance pedestrian safety and really trying to create zones of traffic in the uptown area to where people will be forced to stop instead of just driving through.”
Here’s what’s changing:
At Moss and Church streets, traffic lights will be replaced with four-way stop signs.
At Walnut and Church, the current stoplight will be removed, and a stop sign will go up for left-turning drivers only.
At Broad and Church, all signals will turn into flashing red lights, creating an all-way stop. Davis noted, “If you were to drive through uptown, there’s a scenario where you can hit all green lights, and that can be enticing to drivers to be honest with you because you want to get through those green lights as quickly as possible.”
Chris White, who has owned Chris’s Custom Framing on Church Street for over 16 years, expressed concerns about the changes. He said the city has tried this before in a test, and it didn’t go well.
“About a year ago they tried putting up the stop signs and they tried having blinking lights first, but people were confused with the two lanes going in one direction—one person stopped and one person just blasted through,” White said.
For Anna Wheeler, a resident who walks her dog through Uptown every day, the changes are a step in the right direction.
“Yeah, I think it will make me feel safer. I try to go to places where there are stop signs to turn around with my dog and things like that. Unfortunately, in Uptown, there’s not a lot of that,” Wheeler said.
But this isn’t the end of changes in Uptown Martinsville.
Davis added, “We are looking at things such as possibly elevated crosswalks in different sections or easy-to-make crosswalks more visible. There are a lot of things we are looking at doing as we want to be a growing uptown and welcoming businesses and more foot traffic.”
City officials are urging drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to slow down and stay alert as everyone gets used to the new patterns set to roll out next week.