SOUTHSIDE — More than 150 people packed into the Southside Community Center on June 20 to gather information and make their views known on plans to construct a new northbound Alabama Highway 77 bridge over the Coosa River between Rainbow City and Southside.

The meeting seeking the public’s input was hosted by the Alabama Department of Transportation, which has come up with two proposals for the bridge that officials insist will be built, sooner than later, although they didn’t give a specific timeline.

One plan would keep the existing northbound bridge — which was constructed in 1939, and until the newer southbound bridge opened in 1979 carried two-way traffic across the Coosa — while the other would see it torn down.

However, both proposals feature a twist that ALDOT and officials of the two connected cities insist would mean safer travel on Highway 77, but has caused consternation for some area residents and their governmental representatives.

Traffic would no longer be allowed from Whorton Bend Road onto Lakeshore Drive, and vice versa. Drivers wanting to get to Southside from Whorton Bend Road would have to turn right onto Highway 77, then make a U-turn near the Regency Pointe retirement community. Drivers wanting to get to Rainbow City from Lakeshore Drive would have to turn right toward Southside, cross the southbound bridge and make a similar U-turn.

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Etowah County Commissioner Craig Inzer Jr., whose District 6 includes Whorton Bend, has spoken out against that idea, saying that it could impede or cause issues and delays for school buses and first responders, and called it “dangerous” at the June 20 event.

“We need to work together with ALDOT as elected officials,” Inzer said, “and see if we can find an alternative or a better solution, and still be able to move traffic better, but do it safely.”

Dana Elrod of Southside, who works in the Etowah County Board of Education’s transportation office, echoed his concerns about school bus traffic.

“I love that we’re getting a new bridge,” Elrod said, noting that she travels the route every day, “but I’m worried about getting (school buses) in and out of Whorton Bend from Rainbow City. We need to make sure our children are safe, that’s the main thing.”

Another Southside resident, Larry Simpson, pointed out the number of boats being hauled on Highway 77 with two marinas in the area. “None of that has been taken into consideration,” he said. “This needs more engineering.”

However, Seth Burkett, ALDOT’s public information officer, defended the traffic flow changes, while noting that nothing’s set in stone and that the department is willing to listen to any proposed alternatives.

“It will be safer and that’s why it’s presented as part of this concept,” he said.

Burkett said the crossover between Whorton Bend Road and Lakeshore Drive is already “sort of a precarious setup,” and will become even more dangerous if drivers have to cross two lanes of northbound traffic on Highway 77 instead of one as is presently the case. “It will be twice as much (of a) hazard,” he said.

He said such setups are becoming more commonplace and that studies have shown that U-turns are safer than left turns across traffic. That’s the philosophy ALDOT has followed in recent road projects across the state, including Rainbow Drive in Rainbow City where barriers now prevent many left turns across traffic.

Burkett said it’s all about crash reduction and traffic flow — that crashes and people making turns across traffic disrupt the flow.

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“Reducing crashes is what conflict reduction is all about,” he said. “Motorists would have to travel an additional distance, but not a great additional distance, and the trade-off for safety may be worthwhile.”

Rainbow City Mayor Joe Taylor has no problem with the change, saying ALDOT has estimated that it would mean the same amount of traveling time for drivers while “bringing the fatality factor down to zero.”

He called the plans “well thought-out and good for both Rainbow City and Southside,” adding, “With this size project, you’re going to have a certain amount of problems and technical fixes that have to be adjusted and tweaked, but I think ALDOT will get that done for us. We’re in a place we’ve never been before in that this bridge is going to be built.”

Camp Yancey, Rainbow City’s police chief, was waiting for the crowds looking at maps of the plans to thin out so he could get a closer look, but said he’s seen similar U-turn setups in Orange Beach that worked well and seem safe. He said the barriers that prevent left turns across traffic in Rainbow City have drawn complaints, “but they’ve reduced wrecks by forcing people to make right turns.”

Southside Mayor Dana Snyder said she understands why people are complaining about the changes, but she’s OK with them.

“They (ALDOT) are engineers and they do it everywhere,” she said. “They’ve got them (U-turns)in other places, and I know they’re proven safety-wise. I’m not going to overrule what engineers tell me. The important thing is safety.”

Snyder said if these plans are rejected, “We’re going to sit here for another five or 10 years while things get worse.”

Rep. Craig Lipscomb, R-Gadsden, said he’s gotten complaints about the U-turns and said they’re “not terribly desirable” although he conceded they may be safer.

“The general public doesn’t understand that,” he said, “and they will have to have some degree of understanding that it will be safer in spite of the fact it won’t be as convenient.”

All concerned are happy that ALDOT has made the bridge a priority, however, after years of back-and-forth on how much it is needed to ease morning and afternoon traffic snarls on the route that carries thousands of cars each day and is a main arterial between the Honda plant in Lincoln and its suppliers.

Burkett said ALDOT will look at comments from this meeting — and those that will be filed online through early July — and try to answer questions within the environmental document that must be compiled to move the project forward and obtain federal funding.

He said there’s sometimes a decade between public input meetings and actual construction, but added, “This is probably going to be something with a shorter time-frame than that.” He said it will be a minimum of one year, probably “a few years.”

Lipscomb said he’d worked with Gov. Kay Ivey for six years to make the project a reality; now it’s a question of what the solution will look like.

“There are things that people like and things that people don’t like,” he said. “We have to do our best to see if ALDOT can get people as happy as they’re going to get and stay within a reasonable budget.”

Lipscomb said constituents have also indicated they’d like to keep the 1939 bridge “for nostalgia or aesthetic reasons,” or as a pedestrian walkway. “That decision is going to boil down to financing and logistics and what works best,” he said.

However, Snyder called a plan floated several years ago for making it a pedestrian bridge “a big pipe dream.”

She said, “The more we’ve met and talked about it, and the closer we get to building a new bridge, we know we can’t afford it. Do the taxpayers want their taxes to increase just so we can keep an old bridge that’s decaying?”

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: U-turns draw criticism in ALDOT plans for new Southside bridge