Delaware's beach-bound brace for traffic
Lower gas prices and sunny forecasts mean more Delawareans will be traveling this Memorial Day than last year, sending cars coursing by the thousands toward the Sussex County beaches.
"You could be bumper-to-bumper all the way down," said Dana Harrington Conner, of Wilmington, whose family makes it a point every Memorial Day weekend to gather at a Rehoboth beach house. "There have been some years we sat in traffic for four hours, going down."
Thursday turned out to be a worst-case scenario for Del. 1 traffic, when a midafternoon multi-vehicle accident closed the highway in both directions between exit 114, at south Smyrna, and exit 104, north of Dover. Traffic was diverted to Del. 13, and online traffic maps for both roads stayed an angry red for hours.
When Del. 1 slows, most of the state knows. Legislators even mentioned the backups during Thursday's debates in the General Assembly.
Conner, a professor at Delaware Law School, usually tries to get moving early on Friday before a holiday weekend, hitting the road before 2 p.m. if she can.
But this year, she said, a Friday night dinner commitment upstate means her family will make the drive Saturday morning instead. She acknowledges that likely means a longer, slower, more staccato trip.
"Patience is key. A full tank of gas, for sure. Full cooler of water," Conner said. "But we always persevere. The car is packed, and we're going to the beach. It's just beautiful. If I could live there, I definitely would."
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DelDOT's advice is that southbound congestion will be the thickest on Friday evening, and northbound lanes will clog mid-day Sunday. On Saturday, try not be driving between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when hotels and rental homes are disgorging one set of guests and welcoming the next batch.
Those traveling to the coastal towns will see some changes along the Del. 1 corridor, including early stages of overpass construction south of Frederica and a new overpass just north of Milford.
And once they get to the Lewes area, they'll notice a whole lot of newly paved sidewalks along the highway's commercial corridor, all the way down to the Rehoboth Beach turnoff. All fall, winter and spring, crews on Department of Transportation contracts have been filling in gaps in the sidewalk chains on both the east and west sides of the highway. The work is very nearly done, and DelDOT expects it to be finished this summer.
DelDOT has also added pedestrian crosswalks at several points along the highway, responding to a series of vehicle-pedestrian and vehicle-bicycle collisions, some of them fatal, over the years. Safety advocates and elected officials have long pushed for those crosswalks, but DelDOT has noted in public presentations that the signal time allowing pedestrians to cross at them forces traffic planners to "reduce the amount of green time available for motorists traveling along SR 1."
The bottom line is beach-bound drivers may sit through an additional red light or two in between Lewes and Rehoboth Beach in the name of pedestrian safety. But they could just as fairly chalk it up to greater numbers of people on the roads.
"After weeks of seesaw temperatures and a long stretch of rainy weather, Delaware residents are looking forward to beginning the summer season,” said Jim Lardear, director of public & government affairs for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "Lower gas prices have undoubtedly fueled the desire to travel."
AAA said in a typical holiday weekend, about 95,500 Delawareans travel, about 10 percent of the population. This year, they expect 2.3 percent more cars on the road.
Drivers approaching Rehoboth Beach from the north will also see a large new commercial complex just outside of town. Rehoboth Gateway is home to Bed Bath & Beyond, Fresh Market, and a third Wawa on the Del. 1 resort corridor. The commercial center's footprint is about as big as the West Rehoboth neighborhood, with more than 60,000 square feet of retail space.
Its anchor stores, it appears, are achingly close to opening in time for Memorial Day, but not quite. Nick Hammonds, with developer Jack Lingo Asset Management, said the stores are likely to open in June.
The center's location — with entrances on Del. 1 southbound and on Country Club Road, and sitting just at the spot where travelers leave the highway to enter Rehoboth — is ideal for soaking up shoppers headed south toward the resorts. A traffic impact study for the development predicted it could generate up to 12,000 vehicle trips a day on a summer Saturday.
Walter Brittingham, a former Rehoboth Beach commissioner, says he's not concerned about the center's traffic impact in the resort area, noting the developers made improvements to side streets that make it easier to turn onto Del. 1.
"The Gateway's not going to cause any problems. If anything, it will alleviate a problem," Brittingham said.
While traffic will surely spike this weekend, Brittingham said residents know that means a vibrant beach economy is still humming along.
"We’re fortunate to be sitting at this end, where people can’t get into town fast enough and they stay as long as they can before they leave," Brittingham said. "It's not a mess; it's wonderful... Ten years ago, they used to say about Ocean City, Maryland, if it rains, it doesn't matter, there's enough to do there. That's true of Rehoboth now. It doesn't matter if it rains."
A DelDOT app, available for Apple and Android mobile devices, can show real-time traffic cams, delays and advisories, and turning radios to 1380 AM gives much of the same information.
Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.