Changes are coming Tuesday to the Kansas Expressway and Walnut Lawn intersection in Springfield to help improve safety.
Drivers wanting to turn left onto Walnut Lawn will now have a green arrow to do so.
Angela Hunt is a traffic studies specialist at MoDOT, and worked on this case when the request was made.
“Something I knew I needed to look hard on was our sight distance and the crash history, and those were really the two deciding factors in this case.”
The change is in response to a request by the Springfield Police Department, which wants to reduce the number of broadside crashes caused by drivers failing to yield to oncoming traffic. Hunt did concur with this in her study, saying there were a “very high number of crashes in this area.”
MoDOT engineers also noticed this in intersection accidents, and conducted a protective permissive study. Hunt says that includes looking at “the site area, any kind of safety criteria, the capacity criteria, and sometimes the effect of the coordination.”
Law enforcement are not the only ones who can submit a request for a traffic signal change. According to Hunt, anyone can submit a request if they deem one necessary. MoDOT will then inspect it.
The agency has also asked for Springfield Police officers to monitor this intersection after the changes in order to ensure drivers understand that they cannot go left unless they have a protected green arrow.
“We needed to switch it to protect (the intersection), which gives you the green arrow, the yellow arrow, and the red arrow, instead of the ball green” according to Hunt. She adds that when it comes to changes like this, it is important to look at the volume in that area.
Traffic electricians from MoDOT will modify the traffic signal after 9 a.m. on Tuesday, and if weather interferes with this work, the changes take place the following day. Hunt says this change should not interfere with peak hours in traffic, but it may affect drivers on the non-peak hours when driving.