Group: Wal-Mart doesn’t need signal

The decision to remove a Havelock traffic signal was not supported by an engineering study, which federal transportation policy recommends.

State engineers plan to remove the traffic signal at the intersection of U.S. 70 and Ketner Boulevard in exchange for the installation of a new signal near the Wal-Mart Supercenter entrance. The leader of a residents’ group opposing the Ketner signal’s removal wants to know why the intersection wasn’t formally studied.

“I am convinced that had that study been conducted, Wal-Mart would not have deserved that light and we would still have a Ketner intersection,” said M.C. “Skip” Skipper, chairman of the Ketner Citizens Action Group.

Skipper sent an April 17 letter to Havelock Mayor Jimmy Sanders requesting copies of the engineering studies recommended in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, published by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration, and the state supplement to the manual.

“If they were not done, please confirm that fact to me, since that would suggest that Havelock’s actions are not in compliance,” Skipper said in the letter.

City Manager Jim Freeman explained that all such studies would be conducted by the state, and Havelock does not maintain those records.

He said a subsequent April 25 request under the North Carolina public records law for all city records on the Ketner traffic signal negotiations would be answered, and Havelock would provide Skipper with copies of the requested documents.

Havelock commissioners on June 7 signed a construction agreement with the N.C. Department of Transportation and Wal-Mart that exchanged the Ketner signal for one required by Wal-Mart in order to open its planned Havelock store.

Skipper said the trade — which satisfies a NCDOT policy preventing a gain in the number of traffic signals along the U.S. 70 corridor — was negotiated without concern for Havelock residents’ safety.

“By federal standards, traffic signals are not to be used as negotiating tools, and whoever did that was, in fact, in error,” he said. “If someone in the negotiating chain has violated something, everything should be stopped and the situation should be righted.”

While the federal manual does recommend engineering studies before adding or removing a traffic signal, a leading transportation official said a formal study was not required.

J. Kevin Lacy, state traffic engineer, explained that a study was conducted for the proposed signal on U.S. 70 near the Wal-Mart entrance, and it was that study’s failure to justify the signal’s necessity that prompted the Ketner signal’s removal.

“From the things I’ve seen and read, our department’s position has been that the Wal-Mart did not need the additional signal,” Lacy said. “That was our position before the agreement.

It’s our position now…the compromise we had is ‘pick another signal.’”

The Wal-Mart signal would be located near the intersection of U. S. 70 and Catawba Road, which already is signalized. DOT engineers have called the additional signal redundant and unnecessary, but city leaders indicated it was a condition of Wal-Mart’s agreement to open the Havelock store.

Lacy acknowledged that the federal manual recommends an engineering study for signal removal, but he explained that the document is “a blend of mandatory things, recommendations and guidelines.”

“The words ‘should,’ ‘shall’ and ‘may’ all have very important meanings,” he said.

Lacy said the NCDOT didn’t plan to conduct an engineering study for the Ketner intersection because it will be reconfigured when the signal is removed.

“If we were to remove the signal under the current geometric design…then we would go through that step of the process,” he said. “We are removing the actual opportunity to turn (left).”

Characterizing the situation as “a chicken and an egg thing,” Lacy said he did not know why an engineering study for the Ketner intersection wasn’t done before NCDOT officials drafted the construction agreement.

Either of two proposed designs for the Ketner intersection after the signal is removed would allow motorists to turn right onto U.S. 70. One channelizes the intersection with a “pork chop” median in the service road parallel to the highway, which would prevent drivers from turning left on the service road.

Lacy said the DOT has study data showing the reconfigured Ketner intersection would not need a traffic signal.

“We’ve done studies around the state that say this does not need a signal,” he said. “There are many right-in, right-out type scenarios that do not have traffic signals.”