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November 5, 2009

Contractor set to install turn lanes at new school

By Jean Cole

CLEMENTS — Roadwork designed to improve safety near the new elementary school should be under way in November, an official said.

Pearce Construction, the company building Blue Springs Elementary School at U.S. 72 and Hardy Road, is planning to install left- and right-turn lanes.

David Woodrow, project manager for Pearce, had hoped to begin road improvements in October but now says the work should begin the week of Nov. 16.

“We had hoped for work to begin no later than October, but we were waiting on a waterline that we had to reroute and we are now waiting on AT&T; to reroute its fiber-optic cable lines, which was pushed back because of rain,” Woodrow said.

The kindergarten through fifth-grade feeder school for Clements High School is scheduled to open in June 2010.

Crews will begin by widening the north side of 72, changing some driveways and relocating some mailboxes, he said. Then they will do the south side, where Hardy Road is located, install a turn lane and an acceleration lane on the eastbound.



Traffic signal

As for a proposed traffic signal for the intersection, Limestone County Schools Superintendent Dr. Barry Carroll is still waiting for news.

Carroll wrote a letter in February to Alabama Department of Transportation Director Joe McInnes asking, among other things, to have a traffic signal installed along the highway.

U.S. 72 is a busy, undivided, four-lane that lacks continuous left-hand turn lanes. Speeding motorists, lack of left-turn lanes and no median makes the road more dangerous. More than 30 motorists have been killed on the road in 15 years. Most recently, Gerald Burns, 64, died June 9 of injuries suffered in a June 3 accident in which he rear-ended a fuel truck on 72 that had slowed to turn left into the school-construction site.

The traffic design for Blue Springs School is based on a student population of 650 initially but as many as 900 students in the future, said Jim Hartsell of Davis Architects of Birmingham. The design presented to ALDOT was based on projected traffic for the school as well as existing traffic patterns on the highway, he said.

Still, the traffic volume did not meet federal criteria for a signal.

Believing the DOT could make an exception, Carroll sent a second letter to McInnes in June restating his worries about safety and the need for a traffic signal at the intersection following the death of Burns.

McInnes called Carroll after receiving the letter to tell him he would look into the situation and respond to him in writing.

Carroll said Monday he had not yet heard from McInnes.

Tony Harris of ALDOT said Thursday he would check on the status of the request.

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