Permanent stop lights to be installed at Bloomfield, Silver Springs roads

For the Christmas shopping season last year, city officials installed solar-powered stop lights at the intersection of Bloomfield and Silver Springs roads to ease traffic congestion.

That experiment went so well that permanent stop lights are being installed at the intersection this week.

The Cape Girardeau City Council gave first-round approval Monday to an ordinance shifting the intersection from being controlled by a four-way stop to a traffic signal. While the ordinance must receive another vote, that step is a formality, said city manager Doug Leslie.

The equipment has been purchased, the bases for the lights are already installed and Leslie has the power to sign an emergency order temporarily putting the intersection under control of the new signals.

The lights used last year were a response to severe traffic in 2006 that saw cars traveling west on Bloomfield Road backed up as far as Broadview Street, about a half-mile away from the intersection. The intersection needs a signal rather than stop signs for more than just control of holiday shopping traffic, Leslie said.

"It is a busy intersection any way you look at it," he said.

The $125,000 cost of the traffic signals will come from the transportation trust fund, a half-cent citywide sales tax that pays for new and improved roads. The lights will be the first improvement motorists see at the intersection, Leslie said.

"Eventually there will be more work done to some turn lanes," he said. "Right now we are trying to get the lights installed before the holidays."

The solar-powered signals were rented by the city at a cost of $300 a day, or about $12,000 for the entire holiday season.

The new signals will have video detection that will trigger the light to change to green when a vehicle stops, which is similar to many recently installed traffic lights in the city, said Kelly Green, city engineer.

The equipment to hold the lights will arrive Wednesday and the installation work will be done Friday, Green said.

"The signals did work really well last year, so that is why we are moving ahead," she said.

When the intersection was first constructed, the city considered whether to use signal lights or stop signs and decided to let traffic patterns dictate the decision, Leslie said. At that time, neither the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center nor Central High School, both south of the intersection, had been completed, Leslie said.

"We've got school crossing traffic in there, and it is an intersection in need of improvement," Leslie said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

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