Residents of East Baton Rouge Parish are struggling to return to their normal lives after Hurricane Gustav, but because of widespread traffic signal outages, they spend hours in traffic each day. As of Thursday afternoon 384 out of 439 traffic signals in the parish are operable with 71 intersections without power. About 10 of the 71 intersections are powered by generators. More than 27 signals are poised to return when electricity returns.Signals located at major intersections and those in locations with electricity are priority, said Sarah Paul-Edel, traffic engineering intern with the Department of Public Works.”Our priority initially was to get the biggest corridors up,” Edel said.Lights are being fixed as electricity is turned on, Edel said. Edel said about 15 signal heads, the vertical poles traffic signals hang from, are turned in the wrong direction and must be fixed before the signals can return to normal operations for “safety reasons.””They turned in the hurricane winds. We have to get very large trucks to fix those,” Edel said.
“Extraordinary measures” will be taken to ensure safety as the city attempts to return to normal, and the signals “need to be restored,”according to Ulysses Addison, District 2 Metro Council representative.Addison cautioned the parish to be wary of Hurricane Ike, projected to make landfall Saturday.”We can see another down series of trees and power lines and everything else between now and Monday,” Addison said.Addison said major events at this time raise “public safety issues,” and the parish does not yet “have all the mechanisms in place to make sure the public is safe.””We’ve got two games on the same day in the same city with lights out all around the parish,” Addison said about Saturday’s football games at LSU and Southern.Addison said it’s the parish’s obligation to “provide them the safest pathway to get there.””We have nearly a million tons of debris that still have not been picked up. We are not back to normal, and we currently have a lot of shortfalls in our ability to do several things,” Addison said. “There are a lot of reasons why at this given time we are not, as a parish, ready.”—-Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]