In order to clear the air and start a new year with a fresh outlook on life in Tuscaloosa, I take this opportunity to rant about road construction in my hometown. In 1850, the population of Tuscaloosa was 1950 people. The capital of Alabama moved from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery in 1845 and the town experienced a nosedive in population. This year Tuscaloosa will celebrate its 200th Year and the population is 90,468. So where did this 90,000 plus people go? My simple answer is McFarland Boulevard and Hackberry Lane by way of 15th Street. We are not the Atlanta of traffic jams but for 15 minutes every morning and 23 minutes every afternoon, we have “delays.” So what’s the complaint? It’s not the traffic per se; it’s the craziness of drivers with their cell phones and total disregard for traffic laws complicated by the problem of our city officials’ desire to put turn lanes on every road in the city.
We are continually faced with road construction due to long term improvements on existing streets. When the construction of the intersection of McFarland Boulevard and 15th Street was complete, turn lanes began to be are installed downtown on Lurleen Wallace Boulevard and lanes in the north and south routes have been closed. McFarland Boulevard is also experiencing additional construction delays especially at Hargrove Road. Several months ago I needed to go to the drugstore at Five Points (the intersection of 15th Street and University Blvd) and to the lighting store on McFarland Blvd. I went to the drugstore first and as I left the store I decided to take Hargrove Road to McFarland Blvd., take a left there and straight to the lighting store. On Hargrove there was a closed lane so all traffic was merged into one lane. On McFarland when I got to the Interstate Highway, all traffic was merged into the far right lane directing us to exit onto Interstate 59. I found that I was headed away from Tuscaloosa to Meridian, Mississippi. I took the exit to I-359 and then onto 37th Avenue to get to 10th Avenue. Due to construction on 10th at Rosedale Court all traffic converged into one lane and subsequently stopped to allow a dump truck to unload a truckload of gravel. Turning on Hargrove Road was impossible, since this portion of the road has been closed for over a year so I went to Black Bear Way to get to Hackberry Lane to get home. A trip from my house to the drug store normally takes less than 10 minutes; on that day it took me 35 minutes to get home after abandoning my original destination of the lighting store. I went to the lighting store later via zigzagging through 3 residential neighborhoods including the highest crime district in town to get to Skyland Blvd to get to McFarland Blvd. Ce la vie.
At the entrance of my neighborhood, the City has upgraded the sewage lines on Hargrove Road and restructured the intersection on Hackberry Lane. They are installing traffic signals close to the entrance due to a perceived notion that this highly travelled area needed something. I cannot define that something. Many in our neighborhood believe that the traffic signals will make it impossible to exist our neighborhood by turning left when the light is red. A significant number of residents called the city to express their concerns with the new design of the merging roads and traffic lights. The City’s solution: we are advised to turn right, go down the road and turn around when we needed to turn left. There is a fine line between practicality and just plain stupidity.
Exacerbating the problem, Tuscaloosa is blessed with 38,000 University students who when driving are addicted to talking on their phones, texting on their phones, fiddling with their phones and anything but paying attention to traffic signals, other cars, delivery trucks, usage of turn signals, polite road ethics, traffic laws, and housing and road construction. Growing pains are meant to hurt. Our ways of yesteryear will not work effectively now and our inconvenience has become a necessity in the name of progress.
One can adjust travel patterns with a few good axioms.
- Avoid McFarland Boulevard at all times.
- Note that Hackberry Lane is not an appropriate alternative.
- Do not travel when it rains; there are dumb people out there.
- Turn signals are a requirement, not suggestions.
- Turn right on red when clear does not mean turn right on red when you think you can make it.
- You got to go down a lot of wrong roads to get to the right one.
- Turn right to go left.
- The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
- If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
- Invest in companies making orange barrels and cones, make a lot of money and hire someone to do your errands for you.
We may miss the good old days when driving was less stressful, two lanes, one each way. The route was clear and direct. We even had time to allow the fast food customer to pull out in front of us and we felt courteous and they waved their thank you with a smile. We are more aggressive now and will not allow anyone in front of us. We tend to like progress but hate the change we must undergo for it. Ogden Nash said it best: “Progress might have been alright, but it has gone on too long.”
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