BARGERSVILE, Ind. -- A Facebook post on a Center Grove chat page is calling on the community to draw attention to what many people in the area call a dangerous intersection.
Mother Kelli Sponsel writes, "Asking anyone who would be willing to call Johnson County about the intersection of 144 and Old Smokey Row. It's SO dangerous and even more now with all the additional traffic in recent months."
She goes on to write, "We have a family rule that we don't cross the intersection, but I am SO worried that there is going to be a serious accident."
Which made me realize, that my own family is not alone.
Growing up in the area, as a teen driver I would frequent the intersection of CR 144 and CR 625 by Bluff Creek Church to go back and fourth to my now-husband's family home. It was something that my own mom hated, because she thought the intersection was not safe.
Now, as a grown adult with young children, we made our own family rule that if the kids are in the car, no one crosses that intersection going north and south.
I thought we were just being cautious drivers and parents, much like my own. But after seeing Sponsel's post and the overwhelming interactions, I thought, maybe it is time to take a closer look at this intersection.
I met several nearby homeowners, including Sponsel who lives about a mile away on Whiteland Road, at the parking lot of the church.
The road behind us was busy in the middle of the morning with several dump trucks and large vehicles moving through the area at speeds higher than the posted speed limit.
An ambulance went by at one point and a Bargersville Fire truck, as one of their stations is right around the corner on Smokey Row Road.
Keith Keller walks over from his house at the intersection with his fiance to meet with me.
"We can't leave our house without going through that intersection," says Keller, who notes the intersection is laid out as more of an X shape, not your typical intersection. Traffic along CR 144 does not stop. Traffic on CR 625 traveling north and south between Smokey Row and Whiteland Roads has a stop sign. "When you pull up to it, your sometimes have to take a weird angle to be able to be able to see both directions. There's a hill, a small hill. There's a small curve."
He talks about how when drivers on 625 get to the stop sign, drivers have to inch forward and sometimes pull up in a weird way to be able to see both ways, and even so, the curve and hill on the east end of the intersection makes drivers blind to what is coming up the hill.
"Impatience can make you want to get out there when you really shouldn't," says Kellar, who says with the increased traffic in the last year, that wait is growing longer. "Trucks and dump trucks and just general traffic, the waiting for the intersection is definitely more recent."
With his home on the intersection and 6 kids at the house between him and his fiance, it is an area of great concern for his family.
In his five years living at the home, he has witnessed several crashes.
"I've witnessed myself 3 or 4 of them," says Keller. "The ones I've personally witnessed, I've always come out to make sure everybody is ok."
Which is why he too has created a family rule.
"We've got a pretty strict rule of, the kids stay on the other side of the house," says Keller, who adds one crash ended just feet from the side of his house. "We don't let the kids or the animals on that side of the house at all."
Meresa Girdley is Keller's neighbor across the intersection. She says she's lived her most of her life.
In fact, the iconic "Center Grove Trojans are Dyn-o-Mite" painting on the side of the old farm building was something she and friends painted while she attended Center Grove High School to celebrate a sectional game.
"It's kind of an icon," says Girdley.
But that intersection by her longtime home and the sign has been a source of pain and concern for her family for many decades.
Back in 1967, Girdley says her 5-year-old cousin who lived nearby also ran into the road to fetch a ball and was hit and killed.
Several years later, Girldey herself would be in a crash at this intersection with her then three-year-old son.
"Ya know, I look both ways. I looked both ways twice," says Girdley. "And a car came up over the hill and ya know, I didn't see him."
Girdley says living by this intersection, the sounds of crashes and sirens has become the norm, but it still shakes her to this day.
"Your heart just, your heart just stops," says Girdley, about hearing crashes outside her home. "Living here, I see accidents all the time."
Girdley joined others in the community weighing in on Sponsel's Facebook post about the intersection, with many people commenting and hoping for a roundabout to be installed someday.
"I know that somebody is going to get hurt or worse at this intersection and I just feel like now is the time to address it," says Sponsel. "Something needs to happen here and I don't think it can wait 2 or 3 years."
Sponsel says when her teenage daughter started driving, they made a family rule that crossing that intersection is off limits, and instead they go the longer way to the roundabout at 144 and Whiteland Road.
Sponsel and her family have lived nearby for 7 years, but recently noticed more of an increase in traffic making it more difficult to navigate the tricky intersection.
"We've noticed a huge increase in traffic since 69 opened up," said Sponsel. "People become impatient and it becomes dangerous."
This intersection sits not far from the new interchange at the future I-69 and State Road 144, and other access points to southern Johnson County, such as Whiteland Road, Banta Road, Travis Road and more have been cut off from the interstate. This is field more traffic congestion onto 144 through Bargersville, plus the growth and development in Bargersville to the east of the intersection could also be part of the increase in congestion in recent years.
I reached out to Johnson County Highway Engineer Daniel Johnston about the interchange and if there are any plans to fix it or make a roundabout here.
He said in a written statement, "In late-July the Town of Bargersville contacted the County Commissioners with concerns about an increase of accidents at the intersection."
He goes on to say, "The County contracted an engineering firm in August to conduct an independent Road Safety Audit (RSA) to examine the potential road safety issues and identify opportunities for possible improvements. The County was interested to know options for near-term improvements and for long-term improvements for the intersection. The County is currently finishing our review of the draft report."
So what goes into a traffic study like this and how do municipalities get funding for these projects and decide what intersections are a priority? I stopped by a local engineering firm in Beech Grove to find out.
Trent Newport is the President of CrossRoad Engineers located in Beech Grove since 1995.
"We are a transportation and site development civil engineering firm," says Newport. "So we work a lot on roads and bridges."
The firm has been a part of multiple projects in Johnson County over the years, including several roundabout projects.
Newport says there is always more demand for road improvements than there is money available, and every year the funding sources get used up, so the process to apply for these dollars and grants gets very competitive.
"Projects can be funded at a local level, so whatever the local jurisdiction is, the county, the city, the town," says Newport. "Or they can get federal grant money."
In the case of CR 144 and CR 625 in Bargersville, the area has some uniqueness. The area was for a longtime unincorporated Johnson County, but then the intersection and land around it was annexed by the Town of Bargerville.
However, Newport explains that the town and the county worked out a deal where the town allows the county to maintain that stretch of roads with the resources they have available.
He says there is a process to applying for the funding within the different levels of government, and that some projects can have multiple funding sources if municipalities team up to get the job done, but they also have to prioritize what areas need the most work.
He says roundabouts tend to score well for safety, and are considered less dangerous than a typical 4 way stop or traffic signal.
When looking at priorities, traffic studies are used to collect data from the area.
Traffic studies can look at factors like crash data and how severe the accidents are in a particular area. The study looks at traffic volumes and how busy the area gets. They also take into account the development and growth potential in the area, whether that be population growth or new businesses coming to the area and how that could impact traffic down the road.
"You can't build a project overnight. It's going to take time to develop it, get the right of way, get utilities out of the way, get funding appropriated and build it," says Newport. "And those normally take several years and so you want to try to stay ahead for the need."
He says once construction gets underway, for example a roundabout project may only take them about 60 days to get open to traffic. It is the planning and preparation that can take years.
Newport says even if a project doesn't get the federal funding a community is looking for, there is a still a possibility that it can be funded on the local level if the local leaders decide it is a big enough deal for their residents.
"So if you speak up, you know I think that you could really try to help prioritize those projects by being a voice," says Newport. "To say, this is an intersection that we have great concerns about."
Newport says his firm is not conducting the traffic study on that particular intersection but rather part of the planning for that entire corridorr of 144 through Bargersville, as the community continues to grow.
He adds longer term solutions are things like roundabouts, but there are ways in the short term communities can work to improve safety.
Some of those things include signage warning drivers of a dangerous intersection ahead, clearing trees and brush from the area, flashers, rumble strips, etc.
For these folks who live near 144 and 625, they say they are ready to see some change.
"They say, ya it is in the works," says Girdley. "It's in the works. For 5 years, it's in the works."
