Little John Drive at the intersection of Vaughn Lane in front of the Wal-Mart shopping center has been an ongoing topic of discussion in Pell City, both by the public and the City Council.

At the Pell City City Council meeting on Monday an updated intersection improvement plan and traffic signal feasibility study was presented by Michael Rice with Engineering Environmental and Forestry Services (EEFS) addressing some of the traffic flow issues.

“We are presenting the baseline recommendations to mitigate some issues,” Rice said.

Basic improvements would include removing the existing valley gutter, which has been shown to slow down traffic significantly in past traffic flow studies. EEFS engineers also suggested re-striping Little John Drive to provide two full-length left turn lanes onto Hwy 231, which show significant increases over traffic turning right or going straight at the intersection.

Re-striping Vaughn Lane northbound to decrease the clearance distance required for left turns and through movements and reconstructing the right turn radius from Little John Drive eastbound for those turning right onto Vaughn Lane were also in the proposed baseline improvements.

The engineer’s projected construction cost is between $40,000 to $50,000.

“It’s not too much or complicated work,” Rice said. “We’ll see what proposals come in at. One caveat- the intersection is too busy to shut down during the day. Some work would need to be done at night to impact people as little as possible.”

A traffic light feasibility study was also conducted to see if a traffic light would improve traffic flow in the intersection and to determine the logistics of the project. According to the evaluation by EEFS, the intersection has numerous utilities including water, underground telephone, underground power, and overhead power that make installing a traffic signal difficult.

Alabama Power also has a 15 ft easement that constricts space for installing signal poles. An alternate plan for acquiring a right-of-way from the Marathon gas station in order to install a mast arm style traffic signal. The feasibility of each proposal has more constraints due to utilities and easements onto adjoining properties. The projected cost for traffic signals is projected to be between $155,000 and $165,000.

“We can implement the baseline improvements to see how those improvements help traffic in the intersection,” Rice said.

Once construction begins, the project is expected to take between 10-12 weeks.

The Pell City City Council also approved plans to improve the intersection of Sunset Drive, acquiring easements from two properties in order to improve the radius of the turn.

Brian Muenger, Pell City City Manager, said there have been frequent complaints due to the “relatively sharp bend in the road that occurs at the point where the right-of-way (ROW) narrows.”

Before resurfacing Sunset Drive, the improvements will be made to the turn radius.

“We will put barricades on existing roads so we are not shutting down the roads,” Street Department Superintendent Greg Gossett said. Work is expected to begin on the project within the next month and will take approximately 4-6 weeks.