Opinion: Springfield traffic patterns chase growth

Springfield drivers might have once considered it a traffic jam if they had to wait for a second green light before getting through an intersection.

Old timers can remember when Sunshine was only a two-lane street that marked the edge of town.

I haven’t lived here long enough to remember that, but I can remember when there was no Battlefield Mall, and East Battlefield Road ended at Fremont. The boundaries of the city have moved far out in all directions since I arrived here in 1968.

Like so many other growing cities in the 21st century, Springfield traffic patterns reflect expansion out into what once were fields and prairies, thus creating a growing metropolitan area teeming with homes, businesses and cars.

The advent of the Highway 65 bypass and James River Freeway, along with the Kansas and Chestnut expressways, established conduits to dispatch masses of traffic in all directions.

Still growing

Traffic growth is as much a sign of the times as cell phone text messages and Web surfing.

A chart in Natural Geographic’s December issue tells the story of American traffic growth, including Springfield.

In 1967, the U.S. population was 200 million; now it is 300 million.

In 1967, there were 98.9 million registered vehicles in America; today, 237.2 million vehicles are registered. Besides what this says about the bloated demand for gasoline, it pretty well explains the traffic jam you may encounter on morning and evening commutes or for an evening out.

If this were a perfect world, cities would be planned in advance for a set number of residents that would remain the same.

Traffic patterns would never change, therefore, traffic signals would always handle the situation.

Today, things change so rapidly that new roads need to be connected to old ones, creating solutions that are obsolete by the time they are in place.

You can’t blame the traffic planners; it would be next to impossible for them to keep up with the residue from an influx of people and cars.

The traffic situation in Springfield is probably less horrendous than in a lot of cities, but our rush hours can prove to be a misnomer; no one is likely to rush anywhere.

I have been stuck in traffic where I cringed when emergency vehicles needed to get through.

Train crossings

Local traffic nightmares can appear as rapidly as the arrival of trains crossing on tracks that were put in place at a time when they didn’t pose much of a problem.

Perhaps the most massive traffic jam I have ever experienced was on East Sunshine Street at 10 a.m. A long, slow-moving train had traffic backed up in every direction for who knows how far.

That entire part of the city was shut down.

If it wasn’t the mother of all traffic jams, a train crossing East Chestnut Expressway at 5 p.m. may have been its equal.

Once, these train crossings wouldn’t have caused anything more than a minor annoyance for a few drivers.

In that perfect world, overpasses and underpasses would be built in advance, carrying trains over or under the traffic. In this imperfect world, the trains are important to the economy and must keep on running.

The costs will be astounding to make perfect railroad crossings, and safer, less complex traffic intersections.

Whether taxpayers are willing to foot the bill will depend on how they feel about sitting for long periods in really big traffic jams.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.[[In-content Ad]]