TRAFFIC BUILDS IN BUSY WEST END

Even with Sam's adding to the number of big stores on Siemers Drive, motorists using the street shouldn't expect it to be widened any time soon.

But the Missouri Department of Transportation is working on improving the traffic flow at its intersection with Route K, and Drury Development has plans for improving the intersection of Siemers and Lowes Drive.

By next year motorists could see some traffic on Siemers diverted to the south.

Siemers Drive stretches about half a mile from Route K to Bloomfield Road just west of Interstate 55. Except for a driveway entrance from Route K onto the Wal Mart parking lot, it is the only road providing access to a concentration of big stores -- Target, Lowe's, Staples, Wal Mart and Sam's -- in addition to smaller stores and large employers like Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Any improvement in Siemers can't come too soon for Pamela Welter of Benton. She uses Siemers to get to and from Interstate 55 as she makes her daily commute to her job at Blue Cross Blue Shield. On Monday as she was on her way home, she tried to pull onto Route K from Siemers. She was in the farthest right of the two right-turn lanes.

"I pulled up to the white line to stop, and pulled up a little farther, and saw another car coming and stopped a second time," she said.

At the second stop, one of her co-workers rear-ended her car. No one was hurt.

The Missouri Department of Transportation plans to paint a new white line closer to Route K so motorists who stop at the line will have a better view of oncoming traffic, said Randy Hitt, area engineer for the department.

That's part of an ongoing reconfiguring of that intersection, Hitt said. Last week the traffic signal for cars turning right onto Highway K was changed to a flashing red light.

There used to be two left-turn lanes from westbound Route K onto Siemers Drive. However, motorists turning from the farther left lane ended up in a left-turn-only lane on Siemers. Since most motorists there wanted to turn right into the Wal Mart parking lot or go straight, there was a rash of fender-benders as drivers from the left lane changed lanes, said Hitt.

As a result, state employees blocked off one of the left-turn lanes with plastic poles that Hitt calls "flexible delineators."

Traffic at that intersection could ease next year: Cape Girardeau's capital improvements budget for fiscal 1998 calls for extending Siemers Drive south of Bloomfield to connect with the new state Highway 74, said Brian Strickland of Cape Girardeau's engineering department.

The state plans to have the new section of Highway 74 extended from Kingshighway to Interstate 55 this October, Hitt said. It will later extend to where the city can hook it up to Siemers, he said. There are no plans for extending 74 any farther.

Since Highway 74 will be four lanes, Siemers is two lanes, and one road will flow into the other, the connecting part of Siemers will have to be widened to four lanes, Hitt said.

However, the city has nothing in its capital improvement budget for widening the existing stretch of Siemers Drive, Strickland said. "We realize that there's becoming a need to do it," he said.

The only change planned is a straightened intersection with Lowes Drive, Strickland said.

Connecting Highway 74 should help commuters like Welter. Instead of driving north by all those stores, she will have a direct route to the interstate.

After Siemers and Highway 74 are connected, Hitt said shoppers and commuters from Illinois will have another way to reach businesses along Siemers Drive.

"We expect traffic patterns to change," Strickland said.