ORANGE BEACH, AL – Sometimes when one door opens, another one closes.

In Gulf Shores and Orange Beach one traffic change has opened up – two westward lanes on Canal Road – and another has closed – beach access through Gulf State Park via State Park Road 2.

While the Canal Road project is being met with glee and much anticipation in Orange Beach, over in Gulf Shores the impact of losing a straight shot to the campground from Fort Morgan Road is being met less enthusiastically.

The state park road closure is part of the Gulf State Park Project which will prominently include the rebuilding of the lodge destroyed in Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

The closed road “will be converted to a vehicle free path for pedestrians, cyclists and the future park tram” and an “addition to the popular Hugh Branyon Backcountry Trail,” according to a memo from Jill Allen Dixon, an associate at Sasaki and Associates from Boston, which has designed a new master plan for Gulf State Park. Email inquiries sent to Dixon and Managing Planner James Miner received ‘out of office’ replies.

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon didn’t know Canal had been restripped into four lanes instead of three until he got a call from Gulf Coast Media. He was about to head west on Canal when he answered a call through his vehicle Bluetooth and speaker phone.

“Wow! This is fantastic," he said. “I’m telling you what. They said they would get right on it. They did do it quick. Man, look at this. I’m heading that way right now.

“I sure hope it makes a difference this summer.”

His first look at the new configuration came at the same time as several fellow drivers on April 18.

“I’m watching folks right now and they are driving down the middle,” he said. “They haven’t figured it out yet.”

The Alabama Department of Transportation’s Southwest Engineer, Vince Calametti, said there was enough roadway to “repurpose” the space, narrowing the lanes to 11 feet wide instead of 12 and into four lanes instead of three.

The new look has two lanes running west from Alabama 161 to just east of the Wharf, a center turn lane and a single lane east from the Orange Beach Sportsplex to Alabama 161.

“I was wondering how the narrowing of the lanes would be but this is not bad at all,” Kennon said. “There’s still plenty of lane. It feels good.”

There’s still the resurfacing to be completed, Kennon said, and ALDOT officials told him that would start on April 28 and be completed by Memorial Day. There’s a minimum of new pavement going down so it’s mostly just a resurfacing of the roadway already in place.

“They are to now repave it to have clear lines,” Kennon said. “They are supposed to start paving on April 28 and should have that done before Memorial Day. They may try to pave some at night.”

Kennon says he hopes the project is done before the traditional start of the summer season, the opening holiday weekend of May 27-30. The project is about 2.25 miles and is expected to cost from $783,958 to $958,171.

“That was the goal to have it done before Memorial Day,” Kennon said. “. They were supposed to start the first week of April and I hope there’s no issue of them getting it done before Memorial Day. If they’re two or three weeks behind there’s nothing we can do about it.”

The lanes were built to accommodate checkout days of Saturday and Sunday when sometimes traffic waiting to turn left from Alabama 161 onto Canal Road would back up all the way to the beach and sometimes even further east onto Alabama 182 as far as the Perdido Pass Bridge.

Before Memorial Day 2015 a turn lane was added to Alabama 161 unto Canal, but traffic soon had to merge after the turn – before even getting to Cosmo’s – and whether or not this was helpful was uncertain.

“I can what they were trying to do with that by getting traffic through the intersection,” Canal Road business owner Sanford McLain of the Undertow said. “But it didn’t work.”

The continuous two lanes to the Wharf will eliminate the problem there but it will likely resurface when those two lanes have to all turn right into one northbound lane on the Foley Beach Express Bridge.

But Kennon is encouraged by what he saw on April 18 as he drove the newly configured roadway.

“I can see how it’s going to make a huge difference,” he said.

McLain has owned the Undertow Bar on Canal Road for years and so far he likes what he sees.

“With two lanes I think it will make a real difference,” McLain said. “I think it’s going to help everybody down through here. The flow’s going to be much better.”

McLain said another thing to help flow would be better settings on the traffic light at Canal Road and Gulf Bay Road. He lives on Lauder Lane and has to go through that light several times a day to get to his business.

“They need to fix that light at Lester’s,” he said. “It stays red for way too long.”