Changes approved for Beach Express and County Road 20 intersection

By Jessica Vaughn/ jessica@gulfcoastmedia.com
Posted 5/13/17

FOLEY - Some changes may soon be coming to the intersection at Foley Beach Express and County Road 20. During the Foley work session on May 1, a request to receive professional funding for the …

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Changes approved for Beach Express and County Road 20 intersection

Posted

FOLEY - Some changes may soon be coming to the intersection at Foley Beach Express and County Road 20. During the Foley work session on May 1, a request to receive professional funding for the technical and the survey for this project came before the council. City engineer Chad Christian spoke to the council about the importance of this project and the benefit that it would bring to the community.

“Basically what we’d like to do is realign the turn lanes at the Beach Express and County Road 20 to address a safety issue,” Christian said. “We have some accident history building up there, so we’d like to get the turn lanes to where they’re what they call ‘zero offset,’ where you’re even with the car that’s turning the other way for each direction.”

Christian continued to say that by realigning the turning lanes, drivers’ line of sight would be improved, and the entire process would make the turn movement faster and safer.

“It improves the sight distance and it reduces the distance that you have to cross,” Christian said. “Those medians out there are forty-two feet wide, so really people are crossing four or five lanes instead of two. They’re not judging enough time, and they’re getting clipped.”

The specified intersection has a growing history of such accidents, putting it first to be addressed, but the council hopes to look at all intersections where such accidents are common.

“The police department let us look at the accident history at the Foley Beach Express and 20, and there have been about twenty incidents in the last few years,” Christian said. “They were equally distributed north and south, east and west, night, day, all about the same. So it just points to the volume building to a point where we need to upgrade those turn movements.”

Along with considering ways to improve the intersection, the team will also be examining ways to demarcate the turning lane so drivers will know when to get over, and not have to cross lanes swiftly.

Christian was quick to take this into consideration.

“The problem with doing curves like they’ve done in Gulf Shores is speed,” he said. “But we could certainly look into pavement markers and knockdown posts, just so if drivers did hit it, it wouldn’t make them lose control, but they wouldn’t just physically cross.”

No word has been given yet as to when the project will commence, but it was approved during the May 1 council for the planning to begin.