(OBA®) – Orange Beach, AL – A study by a summer intern proves that the median system installed on Perdido Beach Boulevard in 2016 – while a headache and inconvenience at times – accomplished the safety goals the state envisioned for the once-controversial project.
“We do have the numbers now to say, and the contention all along was the reason for this was to reduce serious accidents,” Mayor Tony Kennon said. “Now we have data.”
Kennon spoke about the project at the Aug. 3 regular and council meeting although there was no action on the project. The council heard a presentation from Logan Lonsdale, a UAB political science student, on the differences in accidents on the roadway before, during construction and after the U-turn system began operating.
“I hate not being able to make a direct left turn and I’m sure you hate hearing about how people hate it, too, but it saves lives and that’s the bottom line,” Lonsdale told the council during his presentation. “It does save lives.”
Before construction left-turn related accidents made up 31.2 percent of all accidents compared to less than 5 percent after the median project was complete, Lonsdale said.
“Most of the 5 percent were due to improper use of the median system,” Lonsdale said. “This in itself proves the great success of the median project was just by those numbers. That is huge. These left-turn accidents are the most severe by way of property damage, by way of personal damage in injuries and fatalities. Knocking this number down to below 5 percent is huge for the city and a great accomplishment for the city and ALDOT.”
During the study, Lonsdale also discovered:
“You’ve eliminated the possibility of somebody getting critically injured or worse on this road,” Lonsdale said. “This is a very busy section of road. This is a 1.7-mile stretch of road and I identified 313 accidents over a six-year period which takes into account a 1.7-mile stretch of road that is very busy.”
Lonsdale broke his research into three periods starting with the 21 months before construction began or January 2015 until September of 2016. There was a total of 93 accidents with 29 being left-turn accidents and 55 front-to-rear accidents. The others were crashes insignificant to the study or didn’t involve two vehicles.
The second period was the 22 months from October 2016 to August 2018 during construction of the improved median and there was a total of 101 accidents with only 12 left-turn accidents and 75 front-to-rear accidents. Again, the rest of the accidents were insignificant or involved only one vehicle.
In the final 32-month period between September of 2018 and April of 2021 only six of 119 accidents involved left-turn motions and 73 were front to rear.
“What’s great about this is people aren’t getting hauled away, there’s no fatalities,” Lonsdale said. “You’re not towing cars away. These are minor accidents, bumper scratches. People are walking away from these. In my opinion, that’s an acceptable alternative to left-turn accidents.”
The increase in front-to-rear accidents has increased but Lonsdale pointed out that those cause less damage to cars and injuries to drivers and passengers. He found that 11 percent of all front-to-rear accidents occurred on the right turn west from State Route 161 to State Route 182.
“There is a very high rate of accidents right here and they all occurred post median construction,” Lonsdale said. “There’s nothing to point to a problem prior to this as it was less than 5 percent occurring in this location. This has to do with not only do you have to stop hard you also have to take into effect the crosswalk and you have oncoming traffic.”
Kennon said the city will explore right of way in the area with hopes of adding a merge lane onto State Route 182 after the right turn in that location.
“I’ve been right there and almost ran into someone and been run into so I know exactly what’s going on and glad you brought it to our attention,” Kennon said. “With the merge lane I hope we’re able to reduce that.”
Lonsdale is the son of Orange Beach Police Lt. Keven Lonsdale who commands the patrol division and Logan is a graduate of Gulf Shores High School.
“I can’t say enough about the experience I’ve had with Logan because he’s a very independent and self-motivated young man that came out of our community,” City Administrator Ken Grimes said. “When he said he’d like to do an internship here this summer for finishing up at UAB I thought perfect and said what do you want to do? He’s a research kind of guy. We knew we were on the cusp of enough years of data to see if the median improvement is working.”
During the regular session, the council:
During the work session, the council discussed: