Traffic congestion snarls around new Wal-Mart store

A new development in the midtown area of Cape Girardeau where traffic tends to back up has some local business owners wondering whether a new traffic signal would ease congestion.

The recent opening of the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market store at 2021 Independence St. has especially increased traffic during the past week in the already-busy area where Clark Avenue and Plaza Way meet Independence Street.

Even before the store opened, the area often would become crowded with cars at certain times of day -- turn-ins for ALDI, Arby's, HealthPoint Plaza and Raben Tire & Auto Service, among many other businesses, along with streets that lead to Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School and access to the Town Plaza shopping center.

All of them are sandwiched between Caruthers Avenue and the intersection of North Kingshighway with Independence Street. That intersection also is one of the city's busiest.

"It's bad," said Raben Tire manager Freda Lintner. "Traffic is always crazy through here, but it really is in the afternoon when school is getting out and around 5. I never try to make a left-hand turn out of here. It just isn't going to happen."

Raben Tire is one of the businesses along Independence Street that experiences backed-up traffic blocking its entrances, Lintner said, and she often sees drivers cutting each other off out of frustration and sees frequent fender-benders.

City engineer Casey Brunke said there are no plans for a new signal on Independence Street because the results of a traffic study conducted in January 2014 by Wal-Mart and submitted to the city did not show a need.

Millie Yates, who owns Cape Cuts, a hair salon at 2009 Independence St. in the building next to the new Wal-Mart, said she is glad to see construction traffic gone with the store now open -- her customers weren't always sure how to get to her business when it was going on -- and that a signal is needed more than ever to help congestion in the area.

"I heard there was talk of one," Yates said. "It'll be the taxpayers who end up getting to pay for it, not the store."

The city sometimes enters into development agreements with incoming businesses that include new traffic signals. In February 2014, an agreement with a private company led to public improvements on William Street before the opening of a new Ruler Foods grocery.

In that agreement, the company, Clila LP, which owns the building that holds Ruler Foods, conducted a traffic study that showed a signal was warranted at William Street and Sheridan Drive and picked up some of the cost of the signal and stormwater improvements.

Brunke said other factors figured into that agreement, including that William Street is a four-lane road. Independence Street is two lanes.

eragan@semissourian.com

388-3632

Pertinent address:

2021 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, MO

2009 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, MO