Valley Plaza Redefines The White Stripe
As a life-time shopper at the Valley Plaza Shopping Center, I have a number of fond memories.
As a child, I remember the the toy section of Newberry’s being used as a way to point my parents on the right track for upcoming birthdays and the few times my dad broke-down and said “yes” to a soda at the Newberry’s diner. Sitting at that chrome bar…wow, what a memory!
As a young teenager, I would beg for a nickel to play a the Four Kings pinball game in Newberry’s while my parents shopped; and a few years later a quarter to play Joust or Tron in the mall hallway near the restrooms.
J. C. Penney was really the only place my family shopped for school clothes.
After college, I visited Rick’s Hair Salon every few weeks and was often drawn into the candy kiosk for popcorn or chocolate-covered raisins on my way home.
The upgrades made to the exterior of Vally Plaza and the parking lot last year are wonderful and I continue to visit Hobby World, Hibbets, Radio Shack and Godfathers as well as other Valley Plaza stores.
However, the intersection created on the south east part of the parking lot where it exits onto Maud street is hazardous. That exit is a three-lane road with two lanes going out of the parking lot and one lane going into the parking lot…but all three lanes are marked with white paint.
According to chapter 3 of the Missouri Drivers License Handbook:
DIRECTION OF TRAFFIC
If the line on the left of you is YELLOW, the traffic on the other side of the line is moving in the OPPOSITE direction.
When the line on the left of you is WHITE, the traffic is moving in the SAME direction. A solid white line marks the right edge of many roads.
At that Valley Plaza exit, two lanes of bi-directional traffic are separated by a single, solid white line. Not yellow, like the rest of the known US highway system…but white.
I noticed this last fall on the day of the Valley Plaza Re-opening Ribbon Cutting but I figured it was a mistake that would be corrected soon. Today, a year later, I left the parking lot through that exit. It still provides an accident-prone intersection where a white stripe DOES NOT mean traffic traveling in the same direction. This definitely needs to be corrected.