If you’re planning to pick a nice hot day to head for Silver Beach this summer you can either hope that tomorrow’s Summer Safety Meeting at City Hall produces an answer to the perpetual traffic jams or be prepared to fill your tank before you go and pack a healthy lunch and maybe a book or two, because you won’t get very far very fast at the pace the community has thus far allowed to become the norm.
Some merchants and community leaders are increasingly alarmed over the endless loop of cars snaking down State Street hill along the arboretum to Vine Street and then onto Broad Street jockeying to get into the front gates at Silver Beach County Park before the traffic cones slam the door shut. They’re even more alarmed at the lack of a solution when seemingly smart, viable options have been put onto the table at previous sessions to no avail.
St. Joseph Public Safety Director Brian Uridge will host a session tomorrow night, Wednesday, May 10th from 5:30pm to 7pm at City Hall as a follow up to earlier discussions in both February and March. The meeting is designed to be an input session from residents on multiple fronts including parking issues and the traffic jams that have become all too familiar.
With more than 37,000 out-of-town cars, trucks and vans making the sojourn to Silver Beach alone between the bracketed holidays of Memorial Day and Labor Day last year, the issue is a very real one and not just for residents who live below the bluff. On many a summer afternoon, and especially weekends, the queue to reach the popular park has been known to snake all the way up to Main Street in St. Joseph creating not only a nuisance, but a genuine threat to life and limb in an emergency situation.
To date, despite viable options offered up, no formal plans to resolve the traffic jams have managed to earn adoption as the solution.
City Manager John Hodgson produced a solid answer in an earlier meeting that would clear the queue rapidly. He recommended that Berrien County Parks Officials allow a free flow of steady traffic into the park and have patrons pay upon departure. That way, as soon as the lot is filled, the entry would be marked as full and drivers would pay when they leave the park instead of upon arrival which causes the majority of the back up in the first place.
Other options under consideration are a use of one-way traffic flows in some parts or even closing off part of the street.
In earlier action the City of St. Joseph announced that the upper road inside Lions Park Beach would be one-way during the summer allowing additional parking spaces there, and inclusion of a “right turn only” lighted sign when heavy traffic on the Park Street viaduct becomes too intense at Lake Boulevard.
The continued practice of allowing long, slow-moving, lines of beach-bound traffic when smarter, expedited options have been offered sends a terrible message to visitors and residents alike. Hopefully, the Summer Safety Meeting will produce concrete results and encouragement to at least give the alternate method a chance rather then simply rejecting it without even so much as a trial run. Stay tuned.
