By Staff
CONFUSING TRAFFIC Ann Maynor, manager of the Once and Again Hope Village Thrift Store on Front Street, adjusts the store's welcome sign Tuesday. Maynor and other concerned residents complained to the Meridian City Council Tuesday that a three-block section of Front Street with three different traffic flows is confusing and causes her customers to have problems traveling to the thrift store. Photo by Paula Merritt/The Meridian Star
By Fredie Carmichael / staff writer
Oct. 8, 2003
Traveling to Front Street businesses can be confusing, according to a group of concerned residents and business owners. They say they are fed up with the traffic problems on Front Street.
A three-block area in downtown Meridian that has three different traffic flows is the culprit.
A section of Front Street between 23rd and 24th avenues is two-way while two bordering sections, between 22nd and 23rd avenues, and 24th and 25th avenues, are one-way.
Ann Maynor manages the Once and Again Hope Village Thrift Store at 2516 Front St., where the traffic is one-way. She said customers complain about the traffic.
Maynor and three other residents presented a petition to the Meridian City Council Tuesday, signed by 227 registered voters, asking that the three-block section return to two-way traffic.
Front Street was two-way until the early 1990s.
Mayor John Robert Smith said the problem will be addressed in a Mississippi Department of Transportation traffic flow study currently under way in downtown Meridian.
Smith said the street probably should have never been changed.
Smith said changing the three-block section back to two-way would cost about $60,000 and "is not as simple as just changing the signs."
In the meantime, customers traveling to Maynor's thrift store and other Front Street shops will have to make do.
The Meridian City Council voted to accept Maynor's petition but Council President Barbara Henson said they will have to wait until the MDOT study is complete before any changes are made.
Maynor said something needs to be done sooner. She said it "only took about a month" to get 227 customers to sign the petition, which sat on the counter near the register at the thrift store.