By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Del Rio drivers are asked to use caution downtown as four more blocks of South Main Street are now one way for traffic.
Del Rio City Council members approved the change in late January, and on Monday, the city posted a map on its social media page letting Del Rioans know the change is now official.
South Main Street is now a one-way street for southbound traffic only from the railroad tracks south to Garfield Avenue. City crews have erected barricades on the former northbound lanes to prevent drivers from using them.
The other change that has been made to downtown traffic is that West Ogden Street is now a two-way street for drivers going east and west between South Main Street and Griner Street.
During the city council’s discussion of the traffic flow on South Main in January, City Manager John Sheedy noted, “This is a topic that has been discussed since before my tenure (as city manager), but we all recognize the difficulties sometimes on South Main, primarily when you’re turning. It’s pretty tight in there, so, I think we had budgeted $150,000 for that project, to widen the street, and we’ve looked at that, and I’ve visited quite extensively with public works and our engineer, considering that we’re only going to gain three feet, it’s a lot of money, since we have ramps, we have rails, and it’s going to take a lot of work.”
“We’ve reviewed it and discussed it among ourselves, and we feel a viable alternative, a much cheaper alternative and possibly a better alternative, would be just to create a one-way as we have for that section of South Main Street south of Garfield. It just makes sense to just extend that,” Sheedy added.
The city manager said he believed the one-way would allow for easier traffic flow and easier parking access for customers of businesses along that four-block stretch of the street.
Sheedy called the creation of the four-block one-way “a viable plan with no serious traffic implications.”
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