ORANGE BEACH, AL – While the new bridge announced for Pleasure Island in October seems to be losing momentum, two other projects to help traffic flow and safety are creating a buzz in Orange Beach.

The Alabama Department of Transportation will spend between $780,000 to $950,000 to add a second westbound lane to existing pavement on Canal Road. The new project was first announced in October at a town hall meeting in Orange Beach with ALDOT, city officials and residents.

“They are going to restripe the current width to add another lane by taking some of the bike paths out and narrowing the center lane slightly,” Mayor Tony Kennon said.

It almost sounds farfetched to think the project will be complete by Memorial Day, but because no new pavement is needed, Southwest Region Engineer Vince Calametti said the season-opening weekend is a reasonable target.

“Absolutely,” he said. “There’s no utilities (to move). It’s kind of repurposing existing asphalt, existing lanes. We really lucked up to have enough out there to repurpose it.

“What we’re going to do is utilize the shoulders but there’s probably six feet of shoulders and when we get through there’s probably only going to be two feet.”

Canal Road’s extra lane – about 2.25 miles from Alabama 161 to The Wharf – kind of got lost in the rhetoric in wake of the bridge news until the bid letting was announced on Feb. 26.

The city’s part of the project will be to add a sidewalk along the entire length of the work area.

“We are in the process of engineering an eight-foot sidewalk from 161 to The Wharf,” Kennon said. “It actually will be on the south and there will be a crossover to the north side. I think it’s going to cross over at the ballpark but we’re still engineering that.”

Community Development Director Kit Alexander said the city is hoping to get Transportation Alternative Program funding to help pay for the sidewalk.

When completed the lanes will be about 11 feet wide, not the usual 12. Calametti said 11-foot lanes fall within ALDOT design standards.

On March 29 state officials will again meet with officials and citizens in another town hall meeting to discuss adding medians to the center lane of Alabama 182, or beach road in Orange Beach.

Back in October this project was mentioned as a one the state had no solid timetable. A few months later the bridge is in limbo, but the beach road project has moved forward in officials’ eyes.

“It’s moving very fast,” Calametti said. “In the last three years there have been 227 accidents there. These indirect lefts will greatly reduce the conflict points, possible accident locations. It will improve efficiency out there on the road by controlling where people make left turns. It’ll help tremendously.”

Instead of an available left turn anywhere along the road, there will be designated areas allowing U-turns for drivers to safely turn around and go back to their destination. Many driveways along the roadway will be right-in and right-out only.

“It will all be controlled by signals so it will be much safer,” Calametti said. “I don’t know exactly if we’ll be adding signals but we may be repurposing some, moving them here and there a bit.”