When Perry Como said that the traffic was terrific in his Christmas song "There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays," he was wrong.
"Traffic was god-awful," said Vivian Amburgey, who works at D&D Outfitters, about the daily crawl she had to endure last year during the holiday season to make it home from the store on Corridor G.
Now that the holiday season has arrived, things aren't looking any better this year for shoppers looking to pick up some gifts at Marshall's in the Shoppes at Trace Fork.
"I'm retired so I can come in the day," said Nicki Bader, 61. "But I wouldn't dare come on a weekend or Black Friday."
Bader said she tries to do most of her shopping online so that she can avoid the crowds at all costs.
She's not alone. Although Kathy Crotty, of South Charleston, Sue Egnor, of Yawkey, and Paula Marshall, of Sumerco, were shopping for toy polar bears at Target, Crotty said that she would be avoiding the shopping center between the holidays.
Crotty only lives two miles away, and while her friends were wearing their best Christmas shirts, she knows that to keep her holiday joy she has to avoid the Shoppes at Trace Forks when they start hanging the tinsel.
The problem with the shopping center is that there's only one exit. A driver can continue straight on RHL Boulevard to get to Dudley Farms Plaza and another exit there, but they both lead to the same place - U.S. 119, also known as Corridor G.
That leads to massive congestion during the holiday season, when shopping is at its absolute peak.
"The traffic is at its worst during the holiday season and you're making a choice to go into that shopping center," said Carrie Bly, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Department of Transportation.
In recent years the Department of Transportation had been talking to the developer of the shopping center about plans to connect RHL Boulevard with Jefferson Road to try to ease the traffic flow.
"We were given a little money for the design phase and to look into it," Bly said. "But if we don't have money for construction, we can't go anywhere with it."
Instead, the DOT is focusing on a project they do have funding for - expanding Jefferson Road to five lanes.
The Department of Transportation will be presenting its ideas to a town hall meeting in January and hope to have the road expanded by 2017.
"For us, our job is to keep traffic moving on the main roads," Bly said.
"So when it starts to affect traffic on U.S. 119 and Jefferson Road, that's what concerns us, and that's what we want to relieve."
In the meantime, folks will still have to sit in traffic on Corridor G and in the Shoppes at Trace Fork. This is bad news for Amburgey, who isn't really that patient with traffic.
"I need to go where I'm going and get on my way," Amburgey said.
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.