After all trolley service in York County ended February 4th, 1939, several plans were considered for improving traffic flow thru Continental Square. A roundabout plan was implemented and stayed in effect until a straight-thru traffic plan was put in place July 7, 1946.
The shown January 10, 1939 plan was drawn by Leverne Johnson; an employee in the Safety & Traffic Engineering Department of the American Automobile Association, Washington, D.C. The White Rose Motor Club favored this plan. It was the plan that was adopted.
After one of my York Plan talks, a gentleman shared that the Square in York operated as a Roundabout during most of the War years, to ease traffic flow. I had never heard that before; however a recent photo on Retro York, effectively illustrates that fact. And a search via newspapers.com confirmed it.
The elevated view shows the northwest corner of the Square in York during the early 1940s; a time when traffic moved thru the Square via a counter-clockwise rotary. Only bus traffic was permitted in the middle of the rotary, to allow access by passengers.
There were a number of reasons for the return to a traditional straight-thru intersection in 1946. However the major reason was that trucks were getting longer. The movement of those trucks between the inner and outer lanes of the rotary often created congestion issues for the cars already in the roundabout. And at times the congestion was so bad that everything came to a standstill; until somebody carefully directed the unraveling of vehicles.
Click on this LINK for a yorkblog.com Full View of the photos in this post.
Links to related trolley posts include:
Roadwork on East Market Street linked to Trolley
Stony Brook, Stony Run and the Trolley
Pioneering 1832 locomotive ran on York Pa. trolley tracks
Reading the Headlines: A Quick Index to All YorksPast Posts
