Traffic was delayed during Monday morning rush hour when a temporary traffic light over Manchester Road at Big Bend sagged into traffic.
Crews are constructing a right-turn only lane from northbound Bid Bend onto Manchester.
These contributed photos were taken at around 9 a.m.
Despite the delays, it will be worth it to make the intersection safer for pedestrians, who are more likely to be actual residents of the area. Any sympathy I might have for commuters is mitigated by the fact that Big Bend is not the only north-south route in the area.
This has completely screwed up traffic in a large area with Shrewsbury/Key West being a solid line from Big Bend to Laclede Station every morning. This project has been going on for too long and I rarely see anyone working on it!
It’s a mess & hope to see it done soon. The traffic on Big Bend was all the way to Laclede Sta Road & up Laclede during rush hour this am. Glad I was going the other way. I avoid that area anytime I can. The one lane in Maplewood is also a traffic tie up.
This job has been a mess since it’s inception. It doesn’t look like much planning went into this and the lack of progress seems to prove what a mistake it was. Why was a right turn lane needed anyway? It will simply dump more traffic onto an already slow moving two lane choke down of Manchester Road.
The idea was to give the right turning traffic from Big Bend to eastbound Manchester a lane to stack up in rather than being stuck behind someone waiting at a red light to change to go straight through the intersection.
Imagine one car sitting in the right hand lane waiting for a red light so he can continue to go northbound on Big Bend and several cars behind him that want to make a right turn. With the new lane the right turn people could go around and make the turn on a red light instead of waiting for the signal to change so the first car can proceed.
Well that was a nightmare, and it seemed that the police closed sections of road that could have been used to partly alleviate that situation. But who can question their wisdom…
Has anyone heard when this construction will be completed? Morning rush hour is already a mess, and it’s only going to get worse with local schools and Wash U and Fontbonne starting back up.
Doesn’t help that it sat there for a month between when they dropped off loads of gravel & when they actually started doing work.
It doesn’t seem like they are in a rush to get the job completed.
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