Hazardous Intersection To Get Traffic Light
By Tak Landrockt.landrock@krdo.comFollow me on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/taklandrock
EL PASO COUNTY – When the sun sets the intersection of Grinnell and Powers, south of the Colorado Springs Airport, becomes a black hole. The only light is from headlamps on passing cars.
It’s been like this for years, but two recent accidents, one fatal, are prompting the Colorado Department of Transportation to put in traffic lights. “The light should have been fought for a number of years ago”, says Gabriele. She doesn’t want to use her last name, but her son’s girlfriend was killed in the November 30th crash.
“I’m sorry it took this long to actually realize it and wanna do something about it.”
C-DOT tells NEWSCHANNEL 13 it’s working fast to get the traffic lights up, but has to go through several steps to get it done. The longest part of the process is getting the light poles specially made, which will take up to 13 weeks.
The current timeline will have the traffic lights up and running by August of 2010.
“We’re concerned enough to go out and seek funding to address the safety issue” says Regional Engineer Mark Andrew with C-DOT. He says the state has $400,000 budgeted to install the lights, but it hopes to also re-surface the road in the area at the same time to save money.
Even if the state accelerates the process it would likely only save a couple of weeks.
