Driving through Morgan County changed last Thursday, January 30. The county’s newest four-way traffic signal, located at U.S. 522 and Myers Road, went online in the morning. Morgan County now has four stoplights.
School traffic at the busy intersection was controlled by red and green lights for the first time last week, after two week of flashing yellow lights as the Divi
sion of Highways prepared the signal.
The installation and activation of the traffic signal is the culmination of a multi-year effort to ease congestion near Widmyer Elementary and the bus garage.
For several years, a Sheriff’s deputy has directed traffic at dismissal time in the afternoons at the intersection to allow school buses onto U.S. 522 and parents to turn into the school zone.
School officials have been asking for a traffic light there for years. Sheriff K.C. Bohrer made a request in 2017 to the DOH to install a light. In 2018, school officials signed over access to a strip of land near the Headstart building to accommodate the light. They were told the signal would be installed in the spring of 2018. Right of way issues on the east side of U.S. 522 delayed the signal project, according to DOH officials.
Highway contractors added turn lanes at the intersection as part of the signal project.