For years, a Franklin woman hated passing through a busy southside intersection on her way to work.
Amy Williams still remembers the close calls she saw or even had herself when turning onto County Line Road from northbound Interstate 65. After she got a different job, she stopped driving through the intersection regularly. But on a recent trip to run errands, Williams noticed a new stoplight was installed for traffic exiting the interstate.
“When the light went up, I thought, ‘It is about time,’” she said.
Now that light is set to be taken down, as soon as this weekend, and drivers are shocked and aggravated.
“It’s crazy they want to take that light down, it’s just a dangerous intersection,” Williams said.
The light was put up during construction along I-65 between Southport Road and Main Street in Greenwood, and was meant to be temporary, said Harry Maginity, Indiana Department of Transportation spokesman.
Now that the project is wrapping up, the state plans to take the light down, the release said.
That means vehicles coming off the interstate onto busy County Line Road will again have to wait for traffic to pass or take a chance and dart out into it.
Commuters and nearby residents say that is a bad idea.
County Line Road is a busy route that continues to get heavier traffic, and the light made a big difference, said Pam Wolff, a Greenwood resident.
Having a light at that location removes the concern of drivers darting out into traffic when they see the smallest space available because they are tired of waiting, she said.
“I’ve done it. You think, ‘Oh, I have just enough room.’ But if you don’t, you are going to be sitting there forever,” Wolff said.
New development, including the new Kroger Marketplace off Emerson Avenue, the new Costco that is planned west of Emerson Avenue and the newly proposed Greenwood Town Center just east of the interstate, makes that stoplight even more necessary, Greenwood resident Lesley Ballard said. Taking down the light when the new 700,000-square-foot Greenwood Town Center was just announced seems silly, she said.
That area is going to need a stoplight, so if they take this one down, they will need to just put another one up, she said.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s working, it helps the traffic flow, it keeps people safer because they actually have a light there, so to take it down would be ridiculous,” Ballard said.
