By Glenn Rolfe

MILLSBORO — The town of Millsboro and Delaware’s Department of Transportation are hoping to turn the page on traffic-flow improvements that target congestion and turning issues.

A tight-squeeze turn at the Washington Street-State Street intersection and vehicular backups near Wawa where Del. 24 joins U.S. 113 — among others — were addressed during Town Council’s Monday meeting.

The turn onto northbound State Street by tractor-trailers has resulted in incidents of property damage, most notably to fencing surrounding the Williams House, the former home of U.S. Sen. John J. Williams and his wife, Elsie — now owned and managed as a conference center by Delaware Technical Community College.

Dr. Bobbi Barends, vice president and campus director at DelTech’s Georgetown campus, said that probably four times a year, the corner fencing must be replaced because of “tractor-trailers cutting that area short.”

“We do own the Williams House property on that corner. We are looking to expand the conference center in the next year or so. We’re working on planning for that,” said Dr. Barends. “So we really would like to not have the property continually be run over by trucks.”

According to Mark Luszcz, deputy director of design for the DelDOT’s Division of Transportation Solutions, the estimated cost, which would include sidewalks, is about $170,000. Mr. Luszcz said DelDOT would not really be in favor of immediately moving ahead with improving the corner unless there was very strong support from the community and town.

A potential remedy could come via DelDOT’s paving project, encompassing Washington Street and Main Street, slated for later this year.

“Besides the expense, this is also having this kind of a larger radius right in the downtown area. It’s not the most pedestrian-friendly design,” Mr. Luszcz said. “As you all know, we are deep into the design of the North Millsboro Bypass. Once that is open, that will — maybe not 100% address this issue — (but) it will vastly reduce the incidences of trucks making that turn.”

Town Councilman Larry Gum wanted to focus on truck use through town.
“Pedestrian traffic is not our issue. Our issue is with truck traffic,” he said. “It is consistently property damage, tearing fences down. That is a truck route. Trucks are using State Street and Betts Pond Road to get through Millsboro. Those roads are not designed for that. This is why we requested this.”

Former Millsboro mayor and current Councilman John Thoroughgood had a simple solution to the tight squeeze at the intersection: Move the stop bar striping further back from the intersection.

“Push it back about 30 feet,” said Councilman Thoroughgood. “Piece of cake.”
Mr. Luszcz cautioned that there is some concern about pulling the stop bar too far back. “People will just tend to ignore it,” he said.

Besides moving the stop bar, which is considered the most favorable solution, other options include a restriction on trucks turning there and also working with DelTech on possibly moving its fencing back and installing some type of reinforced barrier.

“We’ll look at it further and see what we can do,” said Mr. Luszcz. “That might be the best thing to do because … that paving project we are expecting to start up in late summer or early fall. What I would suggest is that we will relook at what (we) are going to do with the paving project coming up. Again, it’s perfect timing because we’re getting ready to have a blank slate, and we can put the lines where we want to.”

Another traffic issue is the U.S. 113-Del. 24 intersection, where some minor tweaks are planned with the paving project.

“When we do the paving job this late summer into fall, the left-turn lane for westbound 24 to south on 113, we are going to make that significantly longer — at least twice as long,” said Mr. Luszcz. “Now, it is in our capital program to do a full widening of 113, which also includes some intersection improvements at 24 and 113. But that design doesn’t start for a couple more years. The project that is coming this summer into fall … when we have a project like that, we look for any opportunity we can to make minor improvements. But it (is) almost always within the existing curb line.”

Councilman Gum would like to see traffic lights at that crossway be changed to allow traffic to flow simultaneously, rather than staggered.

“Why can’t we turn all the lights green in one direction instead of having crisscross? I’m in the fire service. We cannot get out of town because, if a vehicle blocks one of those lanes, we have to drive facing traffic,” he said.

“I understand. There are pros and cons to the traffic congestion and safety related to that in terminology, which (we) call split-phasing versus concurrent phasing,” Mr. Luszcz said. “I feel like we’ve looked at that before, but I will check that with my folks.”

DelDOT has widening plans to address traffic congestion eastbound on Del. 24 before Wawa. This will allow right-turning traffic to proceed a bit more quickly onto U.S. 113 and stop blocking through-lanes as much. This, Mr. Luszcz said, will also allow westbound traffic to carefully go around vehicles turning left into Wawa.

“We hope to have that installed for summer. Hopefully, fingers crossed, before summer,” he said.

North Millsboro Bypass

DelDOT does not yet have a firm projected opening date for the North Millsboro Bypass. It would be 2025 at the earliest, potentially 2026.
“Our goal is to start construction in 2023. We’re still working on design,” Mr. Luszcz said. “We’re working (on) … splitting that project into two different pieces.”

According to an updated traffic projection last fall, DelDOT is predicting roughly 15,000 vehicles a day will use the bypass, designed for one lane in each direction.

“And certainly, any traffic that is going from east of town to, say, north on 113, they will use it, absolutely. We can look further into what we think the travel time differences will be for traffic, say, on Route 24 going west of town and staying on 24 or going south on 113. I suspect that a fair amount of traffic is still going to use the bypass,” Mr. Luszcz said.