The playground isn’t the only new thing at Silver Beach County Park in St. Joseph heading into the summer this year.

As we’ve reported, the city of St. Joseph and Berrien County have been collaborating to improve the traffic flow into the attraction as we wait for the weather to warm up.

Berrien County Parks Director Jill Adams tells us the changes include having two feeder lanes into the park and two staff members taking entrance fees from visitors, as opposed to the traditional one. That was done over Memorial Day weekend, but Adams says it proved unnecessary due to the poor weather and generally low numbers for the weekend. She doesn’t have a visitor count, but says things were fairly slow at Silver Beach for the holiday, likely because of that weather.

Adams says city and county leaders met after Memorial Day and continued their talks about improving access and traffic, and this is something they’ll continue to do throughout the summer. She calls it “an ongoing effort from the county’s point of view.”

The city, meanwhile, has been redirecting pedestrian traffic with sand now dumped into a sort of miniature done all along the sidewalk on the south side of Broad Street heading to the park. That forces people to the north side, unless they want to climb some sand.

Adams says new changes to improve traffic haven’t been fully tested yet because the big summer rush hasn’t started, but we can expect the city and county to continue making tweaks as the season unfolds.