Tony Kennon likes how the tenor of the conversation between Orange Beach officials and the Alabama Department of Transportation has seemed to change of late.
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ORANGE BEACH — Tony Kennon likes how the tenor of the conversation between Orange Beach officials and the Alabama Department of Transportation has seemed to change of late.
And he has a good idea why that might be.
“ALDOT is working with us like they’ve never worked with us before and I attribute that to one thing: the turnout of our citizens at town hall meetings,” Kennon said. “John Cooper, ALDOT director, was so impressed. There was 1,100 at one meeting, 700 at another meeting completely changed his way of thinking about the City of Orange Beach.
“We weren’t just complaining all the time and sitting at home. You were participating. In the last year it has been an improved relationship.”
Part of that improved relationship came when some intuitive led some innovative thinking by city leaders the end result being a second westbound lane on Canal Road.
“When we suggested that we could add another lane going west without adding any width, just redesigning the road, narrowing the lanes, in two weeks we got it approved and done before Memorial Day,” Kennon said. “That was how much respect he has for our city.”
Kennon made his remarks in a June 21 state of the city town hall meeting at the Orange Beach Adult Activity Center that covered a variety of topics. Most of those were about traffic concerns like the Canal Road project. And talk of future projects to improve flow on that critical traffic artery.
The June 29 Islander detailed emerging options for a new Intracoastal Waterway bridge for even more traffic relief.
Besides more Canal Road work, the city is looking for improvements by state on beach road, more sidewalks in Orange Beach and keeping the conversation going about a cross-island connector for a second north-south beach thoroughfare.
City officials hope to soon own the northern portion of Powerline Road which many envision someday being the site of a new cross island road. It is a straight shot from Canal Road to Perdido Beach Boulevard as a right of way for PowerSouth lines. Gulf State Park and PowerSouth both own property along the route.
“We are in the process of buying Powerline Road all the way down to the sewer plant,” Kennon said. “Hopefully we’re going to own that in a very short period of time.
“My goal is we’ll pave that right of way and let folks know, this is a road. It should go all the way to the beach which would solve so many of our problems with incoming traffic.”
On Canal, Kennon says the city and state are in preliminary discussions about adding a second eastbound lane to make the roadway five lanes, an improvement the city has coveted for years.
“We are now talking with ALDOT working on designing another eastbound lane so that we have two lanes coming east just like we have two lanes going west,” he said. “There are more issues in doing that because of right-of-ways and other issues.”
The new westbound lane, Kennon said, has been a success and especially helpful for traffic east of Alabama 161 into the teeth of checkout traffic heading west on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Hopefully those of you who live in East Orange Beach, you’ll see now that you’re not going to be backed up all the way to the Baptist Church or beyond waiting to get through the light,” Kennon said. “That is now our number one priority. That traffic moves first. The officers are watching to the east and they will have first shot off Canal Road. The two lanes (west) have moved more volume and allowed us to do that.”
Residents in East Orange Beach would like to see the center turn lane from east Canal Road onto Alabama 161 extending back east as far as Wilson Boulevard.
Kennon says some give and take with the state might be an impetus to getting that project done.
“We’re going to try to discuss that, do some horse trading,” he said. “Canal Road all the way to Perdido Gate is a state road. They want to give up Canal Road from 161. They don’t want the maintenance of it. What we are looking to do is possibly do some negotiating to our taking over that three miles of Canal Road.”
Kennon hinted the city may ask the state to add the center lane as a condition of the city taking over maintenance of that three-mile stretch.
