| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |
The city of Janesville wants to shut off some old traffic lights at at a south side intersection near the former GM plant. Needless to say, the stretch is nowhere near as busy as it once was.
City Engineer Brad Reents says Beloit Avenue and West State Street were once part of a daily commuter route for thousands of General Motors plant workers a day. But in the years since GM closed the stretch it gets just a fraction of the traffic it once had.
Reents says a three-month city traffic study showed an alternate setup would be safer than than the four-way stoplights that have been there since those bygone GM days.
The study and other city data shows that Beloit Avenue can see people traveling close to 20 miles an hour over the posted speed limit. Reents says that replacing old, outdated four-way stoplights with new ones won’t curb speeders.
The new plan would include a setup that alert pedestrian-operated crosswalk lights at State Street and speed radar signs would curb speeders on Beloit Avenue.
Reents says the city has struggled with electronic problems with the lights at Beloit and West State, particularly during snowfalls, when the lights for some reason blink but do not change to control traffic.
The city evaluates each of its lighted intersections for traffic counts and traffic safety whenever the lights would need to be replaced. Reents said the Beloit and West State lights are the only ones up for removal and reconfiguration in 2024.
City officials said this week they’ll replace all three sets of lighted traffic signals along West Court Street west of the Five Points intersection, but that project doesn’t happen until 2025.
The stretch of Beloit Avenue and West State under the microscope once saw about 5,000 GM commuters a day mixed with other traffic. The state Department of Transportation’s online traffic count database shows no recent estimated traffic counts for Beloit Avenue and West State surrounding the 250-acre former GM site.
The former GM site nearby has garnered some re-development interest, but nothing that would immediately bring back hordes of commuter traffic like Beloit Avenue had during GM’s halcyon days on the south side.
The changeover would cost about a half a million dollars. A hearing on the change is Monday night at Janesville city hall.