If you spend any time on Good Drive, you’ve probably noticed it: The new stoplight at Noll Drive.

It was flashing yellow last time I was through, but it will be operational soon enough. And it’s too bad, because one of the nice things about Good Drive is that it hasn’t been cluttered with stoplights, like Rohrerstown Road. With the exception of the light at either end (Harrisburg Pike and Columbia Avenue) and at Marietta Pike, it was a straight shot.

But, of course, the big Stauffers of Kissel Hill expansion is destined to generate more traffic, as are the smaller offices being built in the nearby complex. So we throw up another light on the new road in order to regulate the increasing traffic, even though the original goal of the new road was to be a straight shot, with as few lights as possible. Funny how that all gets tossed out the window. Though I suspect it’s destined to be.

Which is to say that there are some other proposals for new roads elsewhere in Lancaster County; the long-awaited Strasburg Bypass, the possible new Route 23. Always, these new roads are touted as a means of reducing congestion, and for a while maybe they do - though Rohrerstown Road is still a mess, and it was supposed to be less of a mess when Good Drive opened.

But the suspicion, whenever anyone pitches the idea of a new road, is that it will open up  new land to development, and that this in fact is one of the biggest reasons local officials get behind the plan - sometimes, claiming exactly the opposite. I figure that’s probably right; we already know that the big landowners in Strasburg are chief among those interested in a bypass, and a new Route 23 would open up huge swaths of farmland to development.

None of that’s to say that these formerly landlocked sites shouldn’t be developed; the obvious rationale (from a municipal standpoint) is that the improvements will generate more tax revenue. And we all like more tax revenue, don’t we?

It’s just that this quest for new revenue/more developable land seems, sometimes, to be driving the bus - and we shouldn’t kid ourselves otherwise. Because I doubt that light at the corner of Good and Noll drives will be the last one installed; give it 10 years and we’ll have even more doctors’ offices, even more retirement villas along the stretch, lots more traffic. And then Good Drive will be so bad that you’ll wind up back on Rohrerstown Road, where you started in the first place.