HURRICANE, W.Va. — Folks trying to deal with Hurricane’s rush-hour traffic knows it’s often a headache, but in the past month it has been almost unbearable.
According to Mayor Scott Edwards at one point it was taking close to an hour to drive from Teays Valley to Hurricane on Teays Valley road at peak times because of a problem with the timing on the traffic signals.
“We believe it started about the same time as a power outage about two months ago. Then coupled with that we have a contractor in town around the Walgreens and they’re replacing some signals and doing some work on the timing with the lights. The last few weeks have been an absolute disaster in Hurricane during rush hour, particularly the evening rush hour,” said the Mayor.
The Mayor has been in touch with the West Virginia Division of Highways who assigned a team to examine the problem and see if they could get a handle on it. They discovered one issue was all of the traffic sensors were off line.
“When those sensors are off, there may be no one sitting at the turning lane, but the light would remain green for another minute. It was totally fouling up everything,” Edwards said.
The DOH crew continues to fine tune the timing in each of the lights along Teays Valley Road. Edwards said he anticipates it will take a while to reach an optimal timing.
“It may take a little bit to get perfect, but this week and next week a lot of the issues should go away and already this week it’s been nowhere near as bad as it was,” he said.