Mount Airy officials have voted unanimously to close a short, but well traveled section of Worth Street running beside Northern Regional Hospital — for safety reasons — but there are concerns this could create traffic problems on neighboring streets.
That impact, especially on motorists forced to use alternate means of accessing a major route nearby, will be explored in a N.C. Department of Transportation study to be requested as part of Thursday night’s action by the Mount Airy Board of Commissioners.
It came after a required public hearing in which seven people, mostly associated with the hospital, spoke on the issue.
The closure of Worth from its intersection with Rockford Street to that of Worth and South South Street had been requested last month by hospital President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Lumsden.
It was sought in conjunction with major projects planned for the health-care facility at a total cost estimated at $11 million, including building construction and more parking areas including a deck.
One part of the Northern Regional growth picture is focused on the redevelopment later this year of its north campus along Worth Street, where a helicopter landing and takeoff site is located.
That busy section of Worth Street is between a large parking area and the hospital, a situation requiring employees, patients and visitors to cross back and forth when using the lot.
“I see the cars coming and I just pray that they’re not my next patient,” Dr. Jason Edsall, an emergency medicine physician at the hospital, said during the hearing, explaining that he has a good vantage point of the traffic from the Emergency Department.
Edsall has even worried about his own safety due to having to cross Worth Street to administer CPR for a person in the parking lot, with a recent survey showing that about 750 pedestrian crossings of Worth Street occur daily.
That includes ill or injured persons ferried across it to medical helicopters for trauma center transports.
“This is a really unsafe condition which is accentuated at night and during inclement weather,” Lumsden said during the public hearing.
Observations of the street also show that 40% to 50% of the vehicles using it exceed the speed limit, according to the hospital official.
Traffic worries
Meanwhile, other hearing speakers, including local citizens Gene Clark and Leslie Gaines, voiced concerns about the Worth Street closure creating traffic problems by forcing its users onto other nearby routes to access the Rockford Street main drag.
Of particular concern is the Rockford and South South Street intersection — where motorists who’ve been accustomed to going north onto Rockford by turning from Worth Street at a stoplight will go instead — but face difficulty doing that from South Street.
“The closure of this section of Worth Street is going to increase traffic,” Clark, a former city commissioner and mayoral candidate, said of such impacts.
“I think this needs to be addressed as part of the road closure.”
Discussion Thursday night suggested that a stoplight might be placed where Rockford and South streets meet, which the DOT has been reluctant to do in the past.
However, Commissioner Jon Cawley said this could cause bottlenecks for motorists on U.S. 601 (Rockford Street) trying to get through its nearby intersection with U.S. 52 when heading in the direction of the hospital.
Cawley said the solution at South South Street could be prohibiting left turns from it onto the heavily traveled Rockford Street.
The city board’s motion to close the section of Worth Street was accompanied by Commissioner Steve Yokeley’s recommendation to ask the state transportation agency to study that matter.
“I’m assuming it will be closed soon,” Yokeley said after the vote.
Tom Joyce may be reached at 336-415-4693 or on Twitter @Me_Reporter.
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June 20, 2021 at 06:53AM
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