Public sees J-turn plans

Tri-City area residents and business owners turned out for a public meeting at Patterson Civic Center to learn more about J-turn construction plans along U.S. 90, which will serve as safety treatments for current intersection crossovers.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development has plans to construct 41 J-turns along U.S. 90, spanning approximately 11.2 miles.

The J-turns will be placed between the La. 182 intersection in Ricohoc to Thorguson Drive in Berwick, which is at the base of the Berwick overpass.

The J-turns provide another lane on the highway for vehicles to decelerate and make a U-turn, said Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development District Administrator Bill Oliver.

It will eliminate left turns at crossover intersections.

J-turns will also eliminate some signalized intersections.

For example, in Bayou Vista, people exiting Walmart at the traffic light will no longer be able to turn left onto U.S. 90.

The proposed J-turn will direct exiting traffic to the right and into the J-turn lane so travelers are able to make a U-turn onto the highway heading east.

It is predicted that J-turns should move more traffic by 30 percent, said DOTD Assistant Traffic Engineer Nick Fruge.

“Even though you have to turn by going down the road a little ways, overall, people will be traveling 30 percent more of the time instead of sitting at the signals waiting for it to change,” Oliver said.

Plans are in place to construct a J-turn at the Southeast Boulevard crossover intersection in Bayou Vista.

The highest number of crashes along U.S. 90 has occurred at this intersection. In two years, 49 crashes were recorded at the signalized intersection.

Of those 49 crashes, 43 were rear-end crashes, Fruge said.

“Bayou Vista is a thriving community,” Bayou Vista resident and business owner Barry Lasseigne said. “And until we get acclimated and educated with the idea, fundamentally, we’re going to have some issues that people are not ready for and it’s going to take some time and frustration.”

The worst signal-less crossover intersection on the highway is at Tiffany and Lipari streets in Patterson, Fruge said. There were 18 crashes in two years. Ten were right-angle crashes.

In two years, there were three fatalities at U.S. 90 crossover intersections:

—La. 182 Calumet.

—Red Cypress Road.

—Railroad Avenue.

The DOTD will select a contractor for the J-turns in July and construction work should begin in November. It should take about two years to finish, depending on the weather, DOTD Area Engineer Hiro Alexandrian said.

The project will cost an estimated $11 to $12 million to complete, according to DOTD Design Engineer Brent Domingue .

“I just hope, from what I heard today, it’s going to help reduce incidents, keep people from being injured, and hopefully, no fatalities happen as a result of this as we travel,” Lasseigne said. “It sounds like it’s well thought out.

“We’ve got buses and truckers that come in from all over the country,” he said. “And some of these people are not familiar with these new innovations, these highway setups. We have to prepare ourselves for what’s about to take place.”

The J-turn project is part of an interim safety study conducted by the DOTD, which is in conjunction with the I-49 South project.

In the future, if I-49 extends to the Tri-City area, then J-turns are set in place to coincide with interstate plans.

“This is the first step, the first phase,” Oliver said.