U.S. 31 signals to be fixed soon

If you have noticed you are waiting longer at stoplights on U.S. 31 this summer, you are right, and a fix is coming soon.

When crews milled down and paved the road between Franklin and Greenwood, they also removed sensors in the road that tell the stoplights when to change based on traffic.

That means that those stoplights have been operating on timers for months and not as efficiently as they could, a concern recently raised by at least one motorist, said Harry Maginity, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Typically, the lights on U.S. 31 run off sensors that pick up traffic flow and patterns, so the lights can change to best move traffic through the intersections based on the time of day. But now, with the sensors removed, those stoplights have reverted to their factory settings, meaning they change based only on timing, Maginity said.

Putting those sensors back into the road is one of the final steps for road construction projects, and that work will be starting soon, he said.

Before those sensors could be installed again, crews needed to put down the lines that show vehicles where to stop at intersections. That work is getting ready to begin, he said.

Crews are planning to begin installing the sensors in the road Sunday night, but that work is expected to take two weeks — as long as the weather cooperates, he said.

Each intersection has a minimum of 12 sensors, and some have more, he said.

And the section that was repaved, between Westview Drive in Franklin and Stop 18 Road in Greenwood, has 12 intersections with stoplights.

Work is set to be completed on the U.S. 31 project by Sept. 30, if not sooner, Maginity said.