HANCOCK COUNTY — The road to repair has been a bumpy one in Hancock County, specifically on the Mt. Comfort Corridor.
The road has been open to drivers for a few months, but some residents are concerned the road isn’t safe.
In March, Mt. Comfort Road was finally reopened after months and months of delays. There are still cones, steel plates and new projects on the horizon, making some drivers believe it’s not safe.
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“It looks like they just left it as it is and just said 'OK, that's close enough, we're done,” Cody Bailey, a McCordsville resident, said.
He takes Mt. Comfort Road nearly every day and tells WRTV he’s concerned the road isn’t safe for drivers.
“There’s steel plates laying in the road [and] signs are off everything else; it's just not a great situation out here,” Bailey said. “People are dodging the steel plates that are in the road and it's dark, so they don't know that they're there, so they'll swerve last minute to go around them. The lane ends and there's no information saying that the lane ends. The cones are still out ... people are dodging that so if you're not familiar with the area when you come through ,people aren't ready for that.”
Hancock County Engineer Gary Pool shared the following email statement with WRTV:
“The project is on schedule and contractually required to be finished by the end of 2022. In order to minimize disruptions to traffic we are trying to queue as much work as possible for one big push. The final concrete slab and the final 2” of Asphalt need to be laid. As traffic is flowing well, we don’t have a public safety or project completion risk at this point we find this acceptable. The cones and barrels will remain to delineate areas people should not enter as this is preferred to closing the road. Calumet is doing the best they can. They own the project."
As we reported earlier this year the work on the Mt. Comfort Corridor isn’t over, they are planning to add four more roundabouts to the north of I-70.
“The whole area is going to be a mess for a while and I get that, but this is also 150,000 peoples only way of getting downtown. The other options are going down Pendleton Pike, going all the way out through Fishers down 96th Street to 69 and that's all under construction, so there's just too much going on. Funneling all this traffic to one spot and then having an inadequate road is a safety concern,” Bailey said.
In an email, Pool said the plates in the road are there from Citizens Energy.
Citizens tells WRTV those plates aren't theirs, but they are going to begin work to move the water lines this week. The spokesperson says that will take about two weeks and you'll see lane reduction during that time.
On June 8, ramps from Mt. Comfort to I-70 reopened.
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