LEWES, Del. - DelDOT wants to add five roundabouts and lanes for bikes and walking on Kings Highway. Businesses along the roadway aren't just worried about construction deterring customers. They're worried about a permanent loss in sales after the permanent changes are made.
DelDOT's project aims to improve traffic safety, flow and capacity. Part of the plan discussed at a workshop on Feb. 20, 2024 is to lower the speed limit from 35 to 30 miles per hour.
Mark Chura owns The Brush Factory on Kings. Right now drivers can turn directly into his parking lot from Kings Highway. DelDOT's plans are set to change that.
"There will be a 12-foot wide landscape median here and you will have to go all the way down to the lighthouse and turn around about a half mile or more," Chura says.
DelDOT says its planned five roundabouts are safer than crossing the highway as traffic continues to increase. Still, Chura worries that will re-route beach-bound drivers and would be customers to Savannah Road instead.
"What we're seeing now in the new plan, is that priority to our business community has been lost," Chura says. "The priority is given to new developments, such as what's happening at the Mitchell Farm with their hundreds of new houses and they will get their own roundabout. They will have direct access. When you get to this stretch of the road, we are completely cut off."
In a direct response to Chura's concerns, a DelDOT spokesman tells CoastTV News that the agency does not want drivers making turns across traffic given the increasing amount of vehicles on the road.
"It will be a safer movement to make a right out and use the nearest roundabout to make a U-Turn, and we have data from a gap analysis (study done in Summer 2022) that shows it will generally take equal or less time to make that U-Turn movement rather than wait for an acceptable “gap” to make left turns," says DelDOT Community Relations Director C.R. McLeod.
Chura wants to see what was promised in the 2016 Kings Highway and Gills Neck Road Master Plan and DelDOT told CoastTV at the Feb. 20 workshop that is in fact part of the plan.
"It's consistent with the master plan that was developed years ago," says DelDOT group engineer Bryan Behrens. "It also provides separate shared-use paths on both sides of Kings Highway for our non-motorized travelers people who choose to walk or bike."
In February 2020 DelDOT lowered the speed limit to 35 miles per hour on Kings Highway from Dartmouth Drive to Freeman Highway. Previously traffic had flowed up to 45 mph in sections of the roadway.
DelDOT installed a traffic light at the intersection of Clay Road and Kings Highway in November 2020 after years of businesses pleading for it to improve safety. It's now slated to be replaced by a roundabout which has a lot of shops along the road disappointed.
"All we're doing is building a bigger bathtub for all these cars to wade in to get out to the same point," Chura says. "It really accomplishes very little."
The Kings Highway Corridor project is still in the design and planning phase. The agency is hoping to start the first phase of construction in 2028.