If you drive this road to Optimist Hall, you know why it needs a stoplight.
Traffic workers have installed a temporary stoplight at the notoriously nerve-wracking intersection of Parkwood and Belmont avenues in Charlotte’s Optimist Park neighborhood.
The change is part of a larger project to improve pedestrian, vehicle and bicycle safety at the intersection near Optimist Hall. As of Wednesday afternoon, the temporary stoplights were installed but not yet operational.
The addition of a stoplight was first reported by Clayton Sealey, who runs Instagram and Twitter pages about development in Charlotte. Sealey had encouraged people last month to petition officials to prioritize a stoplight at the intersection, saying on Instagram, “This isn’t about pedestrians, this is about public safety for all modes of transportation.”
Larken Egleston, a city council member who said he asked officials to prioritize the intersection, said the busy section of road “absolutely needs light.”
The area has seen substantial growth in recent years, with the opening of the Optimist Hall food court in 2019 and with the construction of apartment buildings in the Optimist Park neighborhood around the same time. The light rail, too, has fueled growth in the area.
Traffic light near Optimist Hall
The intersection of Parkwood and Belmont avenues is right in the middle of all that growth. An entrance to Optimist Hall’s parking lot located there. A light rail stop is a block away, and apartment buildings tower on two sides of the intersection.
Currently, drivers on Parkwood Avenue do not stop, and drivers on Belmont Avenue have a stop sign.
As drivers head toward uptown on Parkwood Avenue, they come around a sharp bend just before the intersection. Drivers on Belmont Avenue have little time to cross Parkwood safely at the intersection of the two roads.
From the other direction, there’s a hill on Parkwood where drivers gain speed and pose a potential hazard to drivers who are leaving Belmont to make a left or right turn, or drive across the intersection.
“We were seeing accidents there with pretty decent frequency,” Egleston said.
Scierra Bratton, a spokesperson for the Charlotte Department of Transportation, said a project to upgrade the intersection is ongoing. The project will “improve pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicular accessibility to the Parkwood Avenue light rail station,” Bratton said.
She did not give a timeline on when a permanent traffic light would be installed, and did not say when the temporary one would turn on.
The intersection will get crosswalks and left turn lanes, but not left turn arrows, according to CDOT’s website. There will be construction to remove the median on the east leg of Parkwood in order to create space for a turning lane, although the website gives no timeline for this construction.
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