Changes slated for Addis intersection
ADDIS — The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is planning to make improvements to a busy La. 1 intersection where three people died in car wrecks in the past nine months.
DOTD has scheduled an open house Jan. 25 to discuss proposed plans to redesign the intersection of La. 1 and Sugar Plantation Parkway with “J-Turns,” a news release says.
The J-Turns should improve traffic flow and reduce the likelihood of wrecks, especially side-collisions, the release says.
But Addis Mayor Carroll Bourgeois said Monday that a traffic signal at the intersection would go much further in aiding public safety.
Bourgeois said about 50,000 vehicles pass through the intersection each day.
Many of those vehicles, he said, merge onto the highway from a shopping center on the east side of the roadway while others merge from the west as residents leave the Sugar Mill Plantation and Crystal Lakes subdivisions.
Residents in the subdivisions have only one exit — La. 1 — and no alternative route, he said.
The mayor estimates 80 percent of the traffic leaving the subdivisions is headed north, meaning motorists have to cross two lanes of southbound traffic before merging onto La. 1 north toward Baton Rouge.
“We have subdivisions there that are growing by leaps and bounds,” he said. “For one of them, we’re issuing 100 building permits every year. We need a traffic light.”
Bourgeois said he remembers a DOTD representative suggesting that the intersection needed a traffic signal several years ago when the nearby YMCA was built.
“Seven or eight years later, and we still need that traffic light,” Bourgeois said.
Late last year, two people died in a car wreck at the intersection, he said. In April, Ann Hope Browne, 54, the sister of LSU football coach Les Miles, died at the intersection as she attempted to merge onto La. 1.
The DOTD meeting will be held from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Addis YMCA at 3688 Sugar Plantation Parkway.
Call (225) 379-1232 or visit http://www.dotd.la.gov for more information.