Two of the four stop signs at the intersection of Stribling Road extension and Church Road will be removed in an attempt to help traffic flow.
During a February Madison County board meeting, supervisors authorized County Engineer Dan Gaillet to remove the signs after receiving complaints from residents in the Germantown subdivision.
“We’ve been getting an awful lot of complaints about that intersection,” he said. “The way it’s set up, as an always-stop, right now, it fails during the morning peak hour. We’ve got some long-term plans for it, but I think right now, based on our studies, that we want to pull the stop signs down that are on Stribling Road, and let it be a two-way stop instead of a four-way stop.”
Gaillet said that with two fewer signs, traffic will flow better, especially in the morning peak hours when students and parents are driving to Germantown middle and high schools.
According to Sheriff Randy Tucker, it’s not possible to put officers out there to direct traffic during peak hours. “I’m for trying anything that may help alleviate the traffic there,” he said. “I mean, it’s congested to the point to where, when school’s in session, we really need somebody there directing traffic. I don’t have the manpower to put somebody everywhere we need traffic directed. If this is going to help alleviate traffic, I’m for trying it.”
The two removed allows drivers heading east and west on Stribling Road extension, which transitions to Church Road still heading east and west at the intersection, to pass through without having to stop.
Jonathan Kiser, transportation and traffic manager at Neel-Schaffer engineering, responded to citizen questions about a possible traffic light at the intersection.
Kiser said information from a traffic study done in 2016 showed that the existing volumes did not warrant a traffic signal.
