The first phase of the Highway 12 safety improvement project in Starkville has, according to the Mississippi Department of Transportation, led to a significant reduction in crashes along the corridor.
MDOT, responding to a question posed on Twitter to Mayor Lynn Spruill and the department last week, said the first phase of the Highway 12 project has aided a 42-percent decline in crashes. The first phase, completed in 2017, saw 2.8 miles of the highway repaved from New Light Road to Eckford Drive and included the installation of raised median curbs to control where traffic can turn across the highway.
MDOT completed the second phase of work, from Eckford Drive to Russell Street, last fall. Both phases cost a total of $12.2 million.
MDOT Public Information Officer Jace Ponder said the department only has enough data to make a preliminary comparison for crashes along the first phase of the Highway 12 project.
“Our preliminary data shows that if we compare 2015 to 2018, there’s a 42-percent reduction along that section of road,” Ponder said. “Since Phase 2 was completed in 2018, there’s not enough data yet to make a qualified comparison.”
While MDOT has released a percentage decrease in overall numbers, the department has not, so far, released crash total figures. However, MDOT Northern District Commissioner Mike Tagert said Highway 12 was one of the most crash-prone corridors in the state before the project.
“We had documented 1,664 crashes in a five-year period before the project,” Tagert said. “If you do the math, that’s almost a crash every single day for five years. It was the highest frequency for any road with that kind of profile north of the Jackson area.”
MDOT has been hesitant to release crash data — Tagert has said both at a Starkville Rotary Club meeting in November and in response to a Dispatch inquiry for crash data last month that he wanted the department to wait until it had a comparable amount of data to the period before the project to make a more accurate comparison.
“We had originally predicted a 35- to 45-percent reduction, so this falls right in the middle of what we had expected,” he said. “I think this time next year we’ll have some additional numbers on Phase 2 of the project.”
Spruill said she sees the Highway 12 project as a success in a number of ways, including safety enhancements and in making the corridor look better. She said she expects the same trend of crash reductions will hold true for the second phase of the project.
“I’m pretty pleased that we came out on the positive side of things, and not just by a little bit — that is a huge reduction,” Spruill said. “I think that’s exactly what needed to happen and I’m pleased Commissioner Tagert saw it through to the end.”
Though the improvements may have reduced crashes along Highway 12, it’s also led to complaints from motorists about the limited options for turning at certain locations. Tagert said he understands those complaints, but the project was focused primarily on making the road safer, even if at the cost of convenience.
“That particular route represents the highest car count and traffic count in the city — we have 26,000 cars per day on an average day that utilize that corridor,” he said. “It’s the most important business route as well. Our objective is only about public safety and to try to reduce that crash rate.”
Tagert added that the project, through which MDOT implemented improved traffic signal coordination, has increased the efficiency with which traffic flows from one end of Highway 12 to the other.
While traffic flows more efficiently, Tagert said, it does not do so a faster speed. He said that’s because the medians naturally slow traffic down. While the medians were put in place to reduce the number of cross-traffic accidents, Tagert said their slow effect also has the impact of reducing the number of rear-end collisions on the Highway. Those that happen, he said, tend to be less severe.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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