Some town leaders and business owners want to explore turning the four-lane street into three lanes — two traffic lanes with a turn lane — and adding more on-street parking.

The N.C. Department of Transportation is studying the issue and will present its findings at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 18 at Town Hall.

Councilman Andy Moore said downtown needs more parking, and he said the four lanes through downtown are too narrow. Passing vehicles, Moore noted, sometimes knock the side-view mirrors off parked cars. Last week a passing car hit an open car door as the driver tried to get out.

“The downtown area was never designed to be a four-lane road,” Moore said. “Our representatives in Raleigh wanted a quicker way to the beach.”

The town last explored the three-lane option years ago, but the DOT refused to make the change, saying it would cause traffic jams, especially in summer because of beach-bound traffic. But most beach traffic now takes the bypass around Smithfield, and Moore says it’s time to revisit three lanes.

“It may be a good opportunity for us to push this,” he said.

Chris Johnson, head of the Downtown Smithfield Development Corp., said any changes would have to wait until completion of the Booker Dairy Road extension in late 2011. Even then, Johnson said, he wondered if two traffic lanes would work.

“It might be impossible to do it with today’s traffic count,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is squeeze cars onto two lanes and make it unbearable.”

The change would slow down traffic, making downtown streets safer, Johnson said. Also, downtown could use the parking spaces it lost between Front and Second streets when the state added turn lanes, he said. Turn lanes at every intersection would reduce backups, he noted.

Carol Stallings, owner of Stallings Insurance, said she needs parking in front of her office in order to compete with the five other insurance agencies downtown.

“I have people complaining about it,” Stallings said. “I would love for them to change it to two lanes.”