Did the contractors Blacksburg hired to "fix" the various intersections on Prices Fork Road and elsewhere in town get their start in home renovation? Even with the rains of this spring, these projects are taking an awful long time to reach anything that looks like completion. These guys work a few hours, then go home for the day -- they must have a contract that has no ending date and no penalty for not being done on time. Even though most of the work appears to be "done" at Toms Creek and over at Progress and Patrick Henry, there is still a mess of debris, incomplete landscaping, and just enough stuff that makes it look like the last check should be withheld. It ought to be interesting come move-in time and football season while the University City Blvd. and West Campus Drive intersections are still "nearing completion."
As to the West Campus intersection, with that street closed, why does the traffic light still need to cycle? It seems wasteful to make people sit at a red light when there are no cars coming from any other direction. Flashing yellow would seem to be the way to go, which would give the occasional car needing to leave Woodland Drive a fighting chance.
Speaking of UCB, despite all the announcements by the town and Virginia Tech about the impending closing of the right lane from just beyond West Campus up to UCB, Blacksburg's Finest were still confused about why traffic was backed up to Toms Creek Road during "rush 10 minutes" one afternoon. The dispatcher said there were calls coming in from motorists who where unhappy about having to sit in stopped traffic, but they didn't know about why there was a backup. The officers weren't sure what the problem was either, but said they would head that way to investigate. They eventually discovered that the construction that required people to merge into one lane was causing the problem. Why that was such a mystery to the dispatchers and police after all the publicity makes one wonder about the effectiveness of the internal communication of the town.
