County votes to make intersection four-way stop

Last month, the Cole County Commission approved a traffic pattern change at South Country Club Drive and Scruggs Station Road on the edge of Jefferson City limits.

At their regular meeting Thursday, commissioners signed a court order to make it official.

Due to several recent accidents at this intersection, Cole County Engineer Eric Landwehr said, county staff wanted to make the intersection a four-way stop. It’s currently a two-way where only traffic on Scruggs Station Road stops.

“The intersection is half city and half county, so we’ve been working with city staff on this,” Landwehr said. “They did the analysis, and we agree with their findings. We ran it through our traffic and safety committee meeting, and they recommended sending it to the County Commission for their approval.”

Landwehr said last week the Jefferson City Traffic and Transportation Committee approved the stop sign and sent the matter on to the City Council for final approval, likely its April 20 meeting.

Because the intersection has operated as a two-way stop for so long, advanced warnings would need to be posted in the area for an undetermined length of time, Landwehr said. Temporary message signs and rumble strips will be used until drivers become accustomed to the changes.

From 2012-19, there were 19 accidents at the intersection and five crashes nearby, reports from the Missouri Highway Patrol’s Traffic Division state. In 2019, there were seven accidents reported, three of them occurring in December.

In other action Thursday, the commission accepted several subdivision streets into the county’s road system.

Those streets include Homeland Drive in the Pioneer Terrace Subdivision, Weston Place and Darby Place in the Pleasant Valley Subdivision, Biltmore and Thorngrass drives in the Thorngrass Estates, Laura Drive in the Grays Creek Valley Acres Subdivision, LaCharette Drive in the Natchez Trace Estates Subdivision, Casen Court in the Elston Road Subdivision along with Kenview and Sheridan drives in the Kauffman Subdivision.

Public works officials said these streets now are the responsibility of the county because they’ve gone through a one-year interim period and they’ve been found to have no problems. From this point on, the county is responsible for all the maintenance on those streets, including snow removal.

There were also several subdivision streets that were placed on the one-year interim acceptance. Those include Summerfield Drive in the Summerfield Estates Subdivision, Lakeland Drive in the Lakewood Subdivision, Kenview Drive in the Kauffman Subdivision, along with Westward Lane and Territory Court in the Paradigm Subdivision.

The streets granted interim acceptance remain the responsibility of the subdivision developer, according to public works officials. Once the streets are completed, backfilled and graded, the county takes them over for routine maintenance, including snow removal. The developer, though, is still responsible for the streets during that interim year. If anything major happens, if pavement starts going bad or if there are problems with the curb and gutter, they have to come back and repair it.