Residents say ALDOT's proposed 280 changes need tweaking

ALDOT engineers fielded an array of questions and complaints from concerned residents and commuters about the proposed changes to U.S. 280 during an open-house style public involvement meeting on Aug. 11.

Starting at Hollywood Boulevard and ending at Cahaba River Road, the project would resurface and add an additional lane going each direction to US-280, as well as replace the Pump House Road bridge. When complete, there would be eight travel lanes consistently throughout this stretch of road. 

Most of the widening to accommodate new lanes would be accomplished by using the existing median and reducing the lane width from 12 feet to 11 feet, according to the ALDOT project description, and the project could start as early as spring 2023.

Several neighborhoods between Cahaba River Road and Pump House Road, Briar Glen and Sterlingwood, would see their ability to cross U.S. 280 via the median completely removed. Currently, these neighborhoods only have ingress and egress via US-280. 

“With the median access gone, we will have to cross several lanes of heavy traffic quickly to get to the light at Cahaba River Road and do a u-turn to go to school every morning,” said Corey Bush, who lives in Briar Glen and whose children attend Mountain Brook Elementary. 

Matthew Lusco, another resident of Briar Glen, echoed the sentiment about safety. “We have lots of kids in both of these neighborhoods. Take away the median and emergency vehicles will have to go way up and around to get in,” he said. 

Other residents of Mountain Brook expressed concern about the proposed removal of the acceleration lane coming out of Overton Road. The plan adds a dedicated turning lane with a red-green light. The light would turn green for approximately 40 seconds to allow traffic from Overton to turn right onto U.S. 280. 

Joan Johnson, who lives in the Lockerbie neighborhood just off U.S. 280 on Overton Road and has family who lives on Shook Hill, said removing the acceleration lane will cause the flow of traffic to stop and back up, especially in the mornings when people converge on the road to commute to work and school in Birmingham. 

“I’m concerned it’s going to be very hard to get out of these neighborhoods,” she said. “Adding lanes to U.S. 280 will just mean more cars coming to use them and now we won’t have easy flow into it from Overton.”

Paulette Van Matre has lived off Overton for 35 years and agrees with Johnson. “We appreciate keeping traffic moving, but it is frustrating that we are being truncated to do so,” she said. Both residents also said that ALDOT needs to do something to abate the added traffic noise.

Along with the replacement of the Pump House Road bridge, which will remain open throughout construction, a new exit ramp will replace the existing ramp going east alongside Florida Short Route. “The existing ramp is substandard,” said Steve Haynes, Assistant Regional Engineer for ALDOT. The new ramp will be longer. 

Philip Black, a commercial architect who lives in the area behind the exit, said the existing exit serves the local traffic just fine and the proposed location of the new ramp would cause degradation to the environment. “The area is beautiful with old, well-developed trees along the Florida Short. This change would be unnecessarily invasive and require cutting those trees back too far.”

DeJarvis Leonard, East Central Region Engineer, answered concerns at the meeting and shared information gained through traffic studies. 

“Traffic doubles from the Summit to Cherokee, from 2700 vehicles to 5400 vehicles, from around 7:30-8:30 am,” he said. “We monitor U.S. 280 monthly to measure congestion. We believe these operational changes along with additional lanes will help traffic move through faster and more safely.”

Leonard added that the public should submit concerns and ideas to ALDOT via www.ALDOTinvolved.com, referencing project numbers NH-0038(549) and ST-037-038-012.

Sam Gaston, City Manager of the City of Mountain Brook, was also in attendance at the meeting and said that Mountain Brook is doing a traffic study on Overton Road to see if any operational changes can be done to absorb traffic and help it flow more freely. The study is currently paused until construction on Crosshaven Road is finished.