West Lincoln man wants road repaired
Published 9:44 pm Monday, September 18, 2017
West Lincoln Road needs work and some residents who travel it regularly want to know what’s being done to fix it.
Jason Bush appeared before the Lincoln County Board of Supervisors Monday to voice his concerns over safety on the road and to ask District 4 Supervisor Eddie Brown how the county plans to correct the issue.
“There are places in dire need of attention on West Lincoln Road,” Bush said. “It’s just a matter of time before someone winds up getting killed out there.”
Bush said he believes a few spots need immediate repair — a hump in the road about two miles west of West Lincoln Attendance Center, a sunken spot in the road next to a playground and several potholes that have been overfilled with gravel. The hump in the road looked to Bush to have been created from a previous patch job that raised the road surface in such a way that unless vehicles cross it at slow speeds they are suddenly moved to the center of the road as they cross it.
“If a car was to be coming from one direction and a log truck from the other and both crossed that hump at the same time, I believe they’d hit head-on,” Bush said. “It’s dangerous. I’m concerned my wife and kids will be coming across it one day and get hit.”
Brown said he would get his crew to check the spot as soon as possible and work to fix it.
Bush’s worry about the sunken spot near the playground was that someone would not see the dip until the last moment and hit it in such a way that their vehicle would be launched from the roadway into the play area.
“If somebody comes along speeding through there like they normally do and hits that spot, they could take out a whole flock of kids,” he said. “That’d be terrible.”
“We had to replace that culvert in that spot,” Brown responded. “We had to give it time to settle in so it wouldn’t come apart again. We’re about to overlay it.”
“OK, that’s good,” said Bush.
Bush said he understood that potholes needed to be temporarily filled with gravel to patch them. But it appeared to him that whoever was filling them didn’t fully know what they were doing and were overfilling the holes, causing raised spots of loose gravel which were possibly more dangerous than the potholes had been.
“Maybe whoever’s doing it just needs to be trained better, or shown again how to do it properly,” he suggested.
Nodding, Brown said he would address that with his crew and make sure it was handled and the problem spots remedied.
A final question Bush had was concerning lights placed on top of stop signs along Hwy. 84.
“You know those flashing lights on top of the stop signs that y’all put up?” he asked. “Well, they don’t flash anymore. They need batteries replaced or something.”
“That’s MDOT, the Department of Transportation,” Brown said. “Those aren’t our lights.”
Bush said he had not been successful in trying to get in touch with someone at MDOT to ask about the lights, and asked Brown if he would pass the information along to the proper person.