Temporary traffic signal for dangerous intersection
ADDIS — The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development announced Wednesday it will install a temporary traffic signal at the intersection of La. 1 and Sugar Plantation Parkway, a crossing where three people died last year.
DOTD originally rejected installing a traffic signal at that location, planning instead to redesign the intersection by adding J-turns, or two dedicated lanes along the median for drivers to use for turning onto La. 1.
Jodi Conachen, the agency’s director of communications, previously said red lights are traffic control devices, and would only reduce wrecks by 5 percent, while J-turns would address public safety — the state’s most pressing concern — and reduce collisions at an estimated rate of 20 percent.
Several of the estimated 1,000 people living in nearby Sugar Mill Plantation subdivision, however, fought back against the J-turn plan. They circulated a petition, started the “Red Light for Sugarmill” Facebook page and scheduled a community meeting to discuss how to persuade the state to install a traffic signal at the busy intersection.
Sugar Mill resident Josh Hinton, 28, one of the organizers of the Facebook page, called Wednesday’s announcement a welcome sign.
“I’m just glad that our voices were heard,” he said.
But the J-turn plan is not dead.
Conachen said DOTD is still moving forward with the dedicated turn lanes and would also build a frontage road extending from Sugar Mill Parkway to Lukeville Road.
A local developer, she added, has agreed to build an additional road toward the back of Sugar Mill as part of the plan.
“This development is stifled by having only one exit,” Conachen said. “It’s a pressing need for the community to have more access points so people don’t have to use the main line just to go a couple of blocks.”
The traffic signal should be installed within the next two or three months once DOTD can work out the timing of the red light with the traffic barriers installed at a nearby railroad crossing, she said.
J-turn construction, which was scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, is now supposed to be finished in two years, she said.
The delay is necessary, she explained, because adding the frontage road to the plan requires the state to acquire property and conduct feasibility, environmental and design studies.
While that construction is in the works, DOTD will simultaneously study the entire La. 1 corridor for potential improvements to a highway used daily by an estimated 40,000 drivers, she said.
That study should be finished within 12 to 18 months.
“That area is growing,” Conachen said. “We will be looking at where other traffic signals, J-turns and frontage roads may or may not be warranted.”
The outcome of that study, she said, would determine whether the traffic signal at La. 1 and Sugar Plantation Parkway is a permanent fixture, as many residents want, or the temporary adjustment DOTD announced Wednesday.