Town Engineer presents South Street Traffic Study update to Council

Town Engineer Robert Brown leads the discussion on the draft South Street study. Photo and video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

At the Front Royal Town Council meeting on September 23, 2019, Council will approve a budget amendment in the amount of $2,823.09 to accept funds from Edward Greco for the CDBG façade improvement program related to 109 E Main Street. The funds obtained from Mr. Greco and the funds from the Community Development Block Grant will be used to pay the contractor for the façade improvement program.

As the Town moves forward with façade improvements, future budget amendments will need to be approved in order for the Town to accept the funds from the property owners. The amounts
required to be paid by the property owners are dependent on the amount of bid being awarded, so the Town will be unable to process the budget amendments in advance. Budget amendments
will need to be processed as the bids are awarded.

In November of 2015, VDOT completed a draft version of a planning level corridor study of South Street between the intersections with Royal Avenue and Commerce Avenue.

At the request of the Town of Front Royal, Virginia, VDOT Staunton District Planning initiated a planning level corridor study in the Spring of 2015 along South Street (Route 55) between the intersections with Royal Avenue (US 340) and Commerce Avenue (US 522). The Town wants to evaluate the applicability and effectiveness of a Road Diet improvement along South Street, in order to enhance multimodal safety and operations along the corridor, as well as aesthetic enhancements. A Road Diet is a practice where vehicular travel lanes are eliminated in order to provide multimodal enhancements such as bike lanes and improved sidewalks along the roadway, in order to improve safety for all users of the corridor.

Where existing pavement and right‐of‐way widths permit, a Road Diet may also incorporate medians for improved pedestrian crossings and landscaping. In order to effectively evaluate a Road Diet improvement along the corridor, the study also analyzes a future No Build scenario and an Access Management improvement scenario as alternatives to the Road Diet improvement.

At the September 16, 2019 Town Council work session, Town Engineer Robert Brown presented a summary of suggestions to the Council.

Watch the discussion of these two items in this Royal Examiner video: