FAIRHOPE – Twin Beech road will have a new turn lane at U.S. 98 by the start of the upcoming school year, city and state transportation officials said.
Work was scheduled to begin the week of Monday, June 14, on the project to add the lane and improve the traffic signals at the intersection near Fairhope High School. The city and Alabama Department of Transportation are working on the project.
Work includes widening Twin Beech Road at each end of the intersection to include a protected turn lane for cars turning onto U.S. 98. Crews will also put up two more traffic signals at the intersection to accommodate the roadway changes.
At an earlier work session of the Fairhope City Council, Public Works Director Richard Johnson said crews will put up temporary signals this summer and replace those with permanent lights in several months.
“The lead time on the mast arm poles is somewhere between five or six months,” Johnson said. “So, basically the contractor will complete all the work. They’ll be able to put temporary fixtures on the current apparatus and then sometime in December, possibly even January or February of 2022, they’ll come back in and install the actual upgraded signals.”
Johnson said the contractor plans is scheduled to complete the widening project before school resumes in August.
“With good weather, his goal is that all the lane widening will be completed, striping will be down and the temporary signals will be up and operating mid-July to late-July so meaning we’re going to be able to get that work done before school resumes, which was kind of the whole goal there,” Johnson said.
The first phase of the project will be on the east side of the intersection. While work is going on, Twin Beech will be open only to local traffic beginning at Boothe Road to the closure at U.S. 98. Road crews will be working at Pirate Drive to direct local traffic to businesses on that section of Twin Beech. Traffic on U.S. 98 traffic will not be allowed to turn onto Twin Beech at that location during the first phase of construction.
A detour will be set up to divert traffic onto Nichols Avenue Extension to Boothe Road.
