As the South Lawrence Trafficway lingers in limbo, traffic on 31st Street and other east-west corridors continues to grow. This, in turn, impacts all the major streets, north-south as well as east-west, in Lawrence.

Every driver in Lawrence can recite experiences of traffic backing up through intersections because the city’s streets are clogged. It is a routine occurrence on Sixth, Ninth and Iowa streets, an other major arteries. The improvements to 31st Street are only part of the solution, and the problem is that it is apparent no one in authority is addressing the overall problem with any more than Band-Aids on existing streets and roads.

The situation has reached the point that city and county officials no longer can afford to just sit back and await the resolution of the SLT debacle; improvements to 31st Street are needed now.

As it concerns the SLT, a timeline published in Thursday’s Journal-World of events related to the SLT is a discouraging recitation of community dissension and rising costs. The grim history of the SLT was almost matched by the assessment of the SLT’s future offered by a Kansas Department of Transportation official who met with county commissioners Wednesday.

KDOT wants the SLT to clear an expected court challenge by environmental and American Indian groups before committing any more resources to the project. If a trafficway along a 32nd Street alignment passes legal muster, it will take time to get funding together. The best possible scenario, according to Sally Howard, chief counsel for KDOT, is that the SLT could be completed by 2012.

As is true of any road that currently doesn’t have funding, the worst case, she added, is that it would never be completed at all. On Thursday, Howard explained that the trafficway’s future probably falls somewhere between the best and worse case scenarios. Because KDOT believes the trafficway is a vital link in this area’s highway system, it remains committed to its completion, but because of funding and court challenges the timing remains uncertain. KDOT would like to see a court challenge completed, Howard said, but it won’t wait indefinitely for that action and will go ahead with wetlands mitigation work soon if a lawsuit isn’t filed.

The situation creates a dilemma for local officials. The project that has been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls for the SLT to be built on a 32nd Street route and for 31st Street to be rebuilt just south of its current alignment. If the trafficway is built eight or ten years from now, any money spent on improvements between Louisiana Street and Haskell Avenue in the meantime would be largely wasted. As County Commissioner Charles Jones noted Wednesday, “We don’t want to spend $10 million on an improvement, then have it torn up” as part of the SLT project.

Maintenance of 31st Street already has fallen far behind because officials have hesitated to put more money into the road. Given the amount of traffic 31st Street now is carrying, that work no longer can be delayed.

City and county officials should move ahead quickly with a plan to install temporary traffic signals and make design changes to accommodate turn lanes on 31st Street at Haskell Avenue and Louisiana Street. They also should move ahead on planning to extend 31st Street east to O’Connell road and start drawing up plans to expand the entire route to four lanes. That’s the next logical step if the SLT isn’t built on the 32nd Street alignment.

Maybe it won’t come to that, but local officials can’t afford to leave this issue on hold any longer. One way or another, officials have to take steps to ease the flow of traffic on 23rd Street and 31st Street. Given the troubled history and uncertain future of the SLT, it would be wrong for city and county officials to delay any longer taking at least temporary steps to improve the flow of traffic on the increasingly busy 31st Street.

A more pressing problem would seem to be the lack of vision and attention to traffic planning for the city. Buses and bicycle routes are not the solution to a commuting population. What is happening to extend Bob Billings Parkway on west to the one truncated piece of the SLT (which already is carrying more traffic than projected)?

What is happening within the city to address problem intersections? Where is the leadership to be addressing not only existing problems but to anticipate future needs before a crisis develops.

The lamentable experience with the SLT seems to have crippled initiatives and foresight. It is time for the city and county to give renewed priority to traffic issues.