COLUMBIA — On Stadium Boulevard between West Broadway and Interstate 70, the Columbia Police Department will be “aggressively enforcing” traffic signal violations and the blocking of intersections through the end of the year, according to a news release.
The heightened enforcement will last from the Friday after Thanksgiving through the sales at the end of Christmas, said Columbia police Sgt. Shelley Jones.
According to the release, the intersections include Stadium Boulevard and Broadway, Worley Street, Ash Street, Bernadette Drive, I-70 Drive Southwest and the I-70 east and west bound ramps.
According to the release, this is the fifth consecutive year that police will heighten enforcement, following many complaints and accidents in 2004. In 2007, 44 accidents were reported at this location from Thanksgiving through Christmas. And in 2005, 297 vehicles were stopped because of intersection violations during the same time period, the release said.
Most violations arise from motorists breaking Columbia City Ordinance 14-251, “Blocking the Intersection.”
“There’s so much traffic congestion in that area on a regular basis, and add the Christmas and mall shoppers that go through there, it becomes a major problem,” Jones said. “It leads to aggressive behavior. We’ve had a couple instances where drivers started yelling at each other.”
The main problem is that drivers pull into an intersection when the light is green, but traffic in front of them does not move forward so motorists are in the way of crossing vehicles and crosswalks, Jones said.
“You want to make sure you can get through the intersection so that you’re not blocking cars coming through or the crosswalk,” she said.