The good news: The much-needed traffic lights at the University Town Centre seem to be on track to be installed where University Town Centre Drive passes between Sesame Drive and Granville Square and between WVU Medicine and Walmart.
The bad news: The project is looking at a 2025 completion date.
Once the notice to proceed is given (which it hasn’t yet, but hopefully soon), the 60-day site prep starts and the actual light poles can be ordered, which are expected to take four to five months to come in. Assuming the right permissions come this week, the poles won’t arrive until December or January at the earliest.
If we’re lucky, the stoplights might be functioning by the end of winter. With the way construction usually goes, however, we suspect it’ll be spring or summer.
We’re excited that there is finally a light visible at the end of the tunnel (pun fully intended), but we’re disappointed and frustrated that it’s taken this long to get this far and will take longer still to have a finished project.
Granville Mayor Patty Lewis first approached the Monongalia County Commission about the problem areas in September 2021. We first editorialized on these dangerous intersections in May 2022 and urged for the installation of traffic lights immediately to prevent future accidents after roughly a year of regularly occurring wrecks. It’s now August of 2024, and we are just starting to see tangible progress.
We understand that the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, but perhaps they have turned too slowly in this case. Between May 2021 and May 2022, there had been eight reported accidents just where UTC Drive passes between Sesame Drive and Granville Square. Between the beginning of 2023 and now, there have been over 200 accidents on UTC Drive, and the most frequent and dangerous ones continue to occur at WVU Medicine/Walmart and at Sesame Drive/Granville Square especially.
We understand there was a slight hiccup last year when the state tried to tie the lower light into a future project for Exit 153 — something beyond Granville’s, the Mon County Commission’s and WestRidge’s control. But it seems … not a failure, but perhaps a misstep by bureaucracy at all levels that it has taken four years — soon to be over five — to address the clear danger these intersections pose to people’s safety and wellbeing.
We appreciate the time and effort that all involved have put into getting the traffic light project this far. However, we wish the problem had been addressed with greater urgency. We expect quite a few accidents could have been — and could be, given the project is still months from completion — prevented if the lights were installed sooner.
