New traffic light may arrive in September

Getting through the Acoma and South Palo Verde boulevards intersection should be a lot easier this fall, city officials say.

Pre-construction began this week at the intersection, where a traffic light is scheduled to be installed as soon as September, with crews expected to be making final adjustments as late as Aug. 4. The City Council unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement Dec. 8, 2009, with the Arizona Department of Transportation to receive $364,687 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for the project. The installation of the light won’t be finished by the time schools start, Public Works Director Mark Clark said.

“It’s one of these things where you order the signal poles and they don’t have them on-hand and they take six weeks to fabricate them and ship them to you,” he said. “There will be construction this week and next, school will start and then when the poles get delivered six or eight weeks from now they’ll spend a couple of days putting those poles up and the traffic signal will appear almost overnight.”

City staff met with ADOT, HDR Consultants and Roadway Electric in June regarding the project, which was originally slated for 2007, City Manager Charlie Cassens said.

“It was put on the backburner because only one bid was received and it was put well outside the realm of reasonableness,” Cassens told the City Council June 22. “Now we have ARRA grant money that will be used to put in at least one of the two original signals that were proposed.”

The other signal proposed in 2007 was slated for the Smoketree Avenue and Acoma Boulevard, but Cassens said the need was greater at the Acoma and South Palo Verde boulevards intersection.

“Anybody trying to get through that intersection after high school lets out will understand why we chose that intersection,” Cassens said in June.

You can contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com