Indiana installs traffic light on I-65 detour
THORNTOWN, Ind. — Crews completed installation Friday of a temporary traffic light designed to slow motorists taking a detour around a closed I-65 bridge between Indianapolis and Chicago after a woman died earlier this week because of an inattentive driver.
Initially, Indiana Department of Transportation officials said they did not believe that a traffic light could have prevented the Tuesday crash that killed Jacquelin Harp, 45, of Lebanon, Ind.
It occurred when driver Stephanie Shrock, 32, Indianapolis reached for coffee, crossing the median on U.S. 52 near the highway's intersection with Indiana 47 into oncoming traffic, according to Indiana State Police. Harp's car was pushed into a tractor-trailer, and she died at the scene.
“Until you have to do a death notification to a husband at his office, and then to a teenage daughter at school with her friends, one can never imagine the heartache that it brings to everyone involved, including seasoned officers,” Boone County Sheriff Mike Nielsen wrote in a heavily shared Facebook post Tuesday that blasted state officials for failing to put a traffic light at the intersection.
"We have turned a U.S. highway into an interstate," he wrote. The 60-mile detour takes drivers on some rural highways not built for heavy traffic and high speeds.
Many of those who shared Nielsen's Facebook post said they would write state officials to demand a signal at the intersection. Their persistence worked, and the temporary traffic light was turned on around 6:30 a.m. Friday.
Warning signs and rumble strips to prepare motorists for the traffic light will be installed next, Nielsen said in a statement thanking state officials for the signal. U.S. 52 is a divided highway at the intersection where it meets two-lane Indiana 47. A Dairy Queen sits in the southwest corner; a field is to the northeast.
Portions of northbound Interstate 65 are expected to be closed for weeks as crews look for solutions to repair a bridge on the outskirts of Lafayette, Ind., that sank 9 inches Aug. 4 while construction crews worked to widen it.
Traffic is being diverted from I-65 just north of Lebanon to U.S. 52, then to Indiana 28 at Clarks Hill and to U.S. 231 at Romney, Ind. Initially, travelers had been spending as long as four hours in jammed traffic but the long detour was chosen to keep traffic off congested city streets in Lafayette, said Will Wingfield, an Indiana Transportation Department spokesman.
Sensors now are monitoring any structural movements on both the north- and southbound I-65 bridges over Wildcat Creek. Only the northbound bridge is closed, but both are built on the same soil near an artesian spring, a pocket of water in sandy soil that shifted because of pile driving to widen the bridge.
“The data can tell us what’s normal vibration from truck traffic,” said Jason Lloyd, a Purdue University research engineer. “From there we can determine something that may be other than truck traffic, such as settlement.”
Even when the northbound i-65 bridge reopens, construction work in the area will continue. Work to widen the interstate between Indiana 25 and 26 is scheduled to wrap up in the spring; then crews will move to a segment between Indiana 26 and 38.
“Our focus right now is to get the bridge reopened as quickly as possible and safely,” Wingfield said.
Contributing: Chris Morisse Vizza, (Lafayette, Ind.) Journal and Courier