Truck traffic runs through discussion of city council priorities
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MORGANTOWN - Morgantown Police Chief Eric Powell said the city is looking to Charleston for some assistance when it comes to enforcement involving the continual flow of heavy trucks running through downtown Morgantown.
The issue was raised earlier this week when a Morgantown City Council discussion of strategic priorities took a brief detour to touch on a topic that's long been a point of frustration for city leaders and residents alike.
"I want to talk about some of the problems with the truck traffic downtown on Beechurst and Brockway. We're having issues with speeding, no tarps, and, I'm assuming, the jake brakes that are still going on at nighttime," Councilor Louise Michael said, relaying a recent occurrence of a truck cutting off a school bus in an effort to bypass traffic on Beechurst Avenue.
"I was just wondering if we can have more enforcement on Beechurst and Brockway for these trucks. The traffic has doubled down there with these trucks, and we need more enforcement," she said.
Powell said he has no problem directing more enforcement to those areas but has little faith that additional MPD presence is the long-term solution Michael and others are looking for.
"We can respond and be there. Usually, the problem adjusts itself when we're there, and it stops becoming a problem while we're there, and then when we leave, it becomes a problem again," Powell said, later adding, "I can put officers on Beechurst for a while. I can put officers on Brockway for a while. We can probably write a couple citations if we observe something, and that might solve the problem for a little bit ..."
"But doing nothing is not the answer, either," Deputy Mayor Mark Downs interjected.
Powell responded.
"What I can tell you we've done is we've reached out to the Public Service Commission. We're having enforcement agents come up from there to do work for that specifically, because that's what they do. Brockway, Beechurst are both state routes. And so, we're working on addressing the issue using the resources we have beyond just what we've got," he said. "Now, we can do what we can do, and we'll do what we need to do."
The Public Service Commission of West Virginia regulates commercial motor vehicles and heavy trucks in the state.
As with all vehicular traffic, Powell said the MPD addresses violations of code and has utilized targeted enforcement to address specific issues.
"We were stopping trucks for entering the wrong lane turning onto Walnut for weeks. We issued 20 citations. We did that for quite a while. Then we started getting complaints from the company, and we started getting complaints from the truckers, and then that sort of died off," he said.
"We try to be as proactive as we can, and we put people where they need to be or where the problem is, and for a time, the problem goes away. But things like unsecured loads, that's a reactionary thing where we're having to respond to it. An officer isn't going to observe that necessarily until it happens. They're not going to notice that maybe a latch isn't secured, because that's really how the loads are getting spilled. There's a faulty latch or something on the back of a truck. So, there are a lot of nuances to that," he said.
Michael said she understands the topic is complicated, but she's concerned that the flow of trucks, and the instance of truck-related issues, seems to be increasing.
"I don't think it's not a problem. I recognize the problem. I think it's just going to take a little different approach than just direct enforcement to address it," Powell said. "I think the Public Service Commission is the right way to go."
The discussion surrounding heavy trucks rolling through Morgantown has been going on for well over a decade.
They're loud. They produce heavy exhaust, and they jam up downtown traffic.
They're also necessary to commerce and utilizing state routes that the city cannot restrict.
That was made clear starting in September 2014 when Morgantown City Council passed laws defining "heavy trucks" and banning their use in the city's downtown business district.
Three trucking companies immediately filed suit in response. That lawsuit resulted in both the Kanawha County Circuit Court and, ultimately, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals telling the city it had overstepped.
While the direct approach was shut down in the courts, some hold out hope that a more roundabout effort to remove trucks from the downtown by providing an alternative route via an improved Green Bag Road will be more effective.
Mountaineer Contractors was awarded an $18.3 million contract in December 2024 to widen a segment of Green Bag Road and build roundabouts at its intersections with Kingwood Pike and Mississippi Street. The latest update indicated that work would stretch into late 2027, though right-of-way issues have likely impacted that timeline.
A second phase of improvements - which would address the rest of Green Bag Road as well as its intersection with Don Knotts Boulevard - is expected to follow at some point.
Time will ultimately tell whether those improvements impact the flow of trucks into the city’s downtown.
"We ran a lot of those scenarios. The main reason they're using that [downtown] route is because they get paid per payload, and that's the shortest route from where they're starting and where they're going," Assistant City Manager Emily Muzzarelli said. "A lot of that is going to their offloading facility that is down behind Seneca Center. It's the shortest route, and they get paid each time they drop a payload."