We don’t envy the Waco Metropolitan Planning Organization’s vote this afternoon concerning a major plan to prioritize the construction of medians along most of Valley Mills Drive, especially with some merchants claiming it will hurt their business along one of the most business-dominated streets in McLennan County.

Local transportation officials are correct that Valley Mills Drive — once upon a time State Highway 6 — is both a marvel and a menace, stretching out eight lanes wide at some points. Only the other evening, a Trib editorial board member witnessed an all-too-common sight there — a motorist suddenly doing a sprawling U-turn in busy traffic, crossing in front of three lanes of oncoming vehicles. All survived.

And then you have those who recklessly weave in and out of traffic, using shared-turn lanes to pass if no other lane is available.

Much of our city was shocked by the March 2006 pedestrian deaths of a 79-year-old man and two great-grandchildren in his care — one age 5, the other age 2 and in a stroller — struck by a sport utility vehicle after they crossed not at a traffic light but a short ways off on this heavily congested street. Since then, traffic engineers have considered this and other accidents, including 193 crashes on Valley Mills Drive in 2008 alone. That’s about one every other day.

Still, we urge caution in any decision by the MPO board adding medians for all of Valley Mills Drive where they don’t already exist. Some turn lanes in medians we’ve seen along Valley Mills Drive and elsewhere actually have the unintended effect of backing traffic up into through lanes as turn-lane traffic sits waiting to turn. This is a significant and dangerous problem.

Surely, at least some of the $10.1 million proposed for this project could be better spent improving yet other local roads, including finally expanding two-lane China Spring Road, an incredibly perilous stretch that should have been widened years ago as China Spring exploded in growth and traffic mushroomed along what was intended as a quiet country road.

Rather than replacing shared-turn lanes with a full line of medians along Valley Mills Drive, could not a mixture of solutions work, including one or two more footbridges along crucial points, such as that now at Bagby Avenue? Could not a greater presence of Waco police in this sea of traffic prevent more U-turns and lane-changing, thus preventing more danger to countless motorists and the very few pedestrians we see? And couldn’t traffic lights be better timed for pedestrians?

To some degree, traffic on the stretch of Valley Mills Drive through Beverly Hills is better mannered, partially because of its strong reputation as a speed trap.

As Trib staff writer Michael W. Shapiro reported this week, some merchants are understandably concerned about how medians on Valley Mills Drive would adversely impact their business — viewpoints articulated by Tommy Brashier, owner of the newly opened eatery Tommy B’s, in his guest column today.

With many other transportation problems facing the county and highway funds increasingly scarce, transportation officials might get far more bang for their buck by looking at a rich variety of options for Valley Mills Drive — a unique street if there ever was one — and subsequently spreading some of these highway funds to other areas of McLennan County where roads are less equipped to handle our growing traffic dynamics.

MPO director Chris Evilia tells us that the list of road projects up for approval is not yet funded and that a couple of years likely would pass before designs for any median work are done. Whatever the MPO board does today, we ask that it carefully consider all of these factors — commerce, scarcity of funds and other pressing local road projects — in making its decision.