Downtown traffic conditions alar

Lenoir City business owners, workers and residents are concerned about traffic safety downtown.

The busy East Broadway thoroughfare is crowded with traffic virtually all day. The morning and evening commutes are especially jammed with drivers.

Excessive speeding is cited as a prevalent problem, despite the new timed traffic lights. Although the limit is 30 mph, rarely are drivers abiding by the posted speed.

State Farm Agent Dane Ogden has occupied an office on Broadway for nearly eight years and said he’s able to watch drivers run red lights and speed past all day.

“I’ll do 30 and people will fly by me,” Ogden said, emphasizing the traffic light at Kingston Street is also an issue.

“I can barely be up here and see two or three people run that red light,” he said. “I think it’s partially attributed to speeding. If they weren’t speeding, they’d be less likely to run it, but it’s really bad.”

For the amount of speeding, Ogden said he never sees anyone pulled over by law enforcement downtown.

“It’s not only the speeding and running the red lights, it’s the disregard for the traffic laws because nobody suffers for it,” Dale Creelman, owner of Papa Dale’s, said. “The only time I’ve ever seen the police stop anybody, and it’s maybe once every couple of months, it’s in the evening after all the traffic is pretty much gone.”

Creelman said he has expressed concerns about downtown traffic trends for years to local government officials and at merchant meetings. He said many of his clientele are older and afraid of driving and parking downtown.

For some customers, Creelman walks them outside and stands in the road to allow them peace of mind while entering and exiting their vehicles.

“They don’t enforce the traffic laws when people are coming to work or when they’re going home, and that’s when it’s the most dangerous out here,” he said. “You got an ice cream store. You got the playgrounds. You got more business around here. People walking around. Kids walking around. But they don’t do anything about it.”

Safety concerns stretch on both sides of Broadway.

Susan Indranoi, owner of Sadie’s Boutique, said there are discomforts when owning a shop on Broadway.

“I worry about pedestrians, but that’s why my register is back this way (in the middle of the store),” Indranoi said. “I always thought, ‘God, if anyone came barreling through, we’d be dead’.”

She said the city has put in pedestrian walkways and coordinated traffic lights, but those changes haven’t prevented a large number of drivers from being reckless in the area.

Semitrailer traffic is another prevalent concern, she said.

With an industrial park less than a mile from downtown, semitrailers frequent the area at rapid speeds, often catching traffic lights too quickly to stop.

Amanda Watson has lived her entire life on or near Hickory Creek and considers herself a safe, reliable driver. For years, she said she has witnessed the decline of driving skills, coupled with distracted driving, to the point of recklessness.

Living in a high-traffic area, she said she’s offered to let officers sit in her driveway. Watson said she was even downtown when a driver side-swiped a parked car, flipped and landed the vehicle on its side.

“People are just oblivious,” Watson said. “It’s like they’re so busy on their phone, they’re not paying attention to the red lights, and you have people who are running red lights.

“... I think if there were more officers who were strategically placed, then it might cut down on some of it,” she added. “Not necessarily speed traps, but if their presence was known more, (it could help). Even going down 321 by the police station, people fly through there.”