Tim,

I apologize for closing this issue! Ever since this issue was created back in 2010, my email is getting blown up!!! I figured that nothing will ever come of this, so I closed the case to give my email a break!!! I believe the city of Hattiesburg wants to keep the traffic bottlenecked to Hardy Street because they believe the increased traffic correlates with increased revenue!! Most nearby residents aren't going to stop unless they intend to anyway. My arguement would be that by taking locals off of this street by giving them other avenues, ie. Lincoln Road, it would increase the likelihood that shoppers would come due to less traffic! The exit ramp off of Lincoln could also be beneficial to that area by creating more local needed businesses. I'm not aware of the residential housing around the area, but that would obviously play a factor in this as well.