Grambling residents: Hazardous intersection needs attention
Leader photo by Nancy Bergeron
This warning sign on College Avenue in Grambling is supposed to show the speed of oncoming vehicles ahead of the intersection with Harris Street but has not functioned for at least eight months, residents say.
GRAMBLING – When Augusta Clark pulls out of her driveway and up to the intersection of Harris Street and College Avenue just a few yards away, she turns off the radio and the air conditioner and lets down the driver’s side window.
That’s the only way motorists know for sure if traffic is approaching on College Avenue from the east, she said. Because if you’re making a left turn, you can’t see oncoming vehicles until they’re almost on top of you.
Clark and other Grambling residents want the city to take steps to better warn motorists about what they say are speed and line-of-sight issues with the intersection.
“Somebody’s going to run into somebody,” Clark told the Grambling City Council last week. “There have been several incidents of close-call accidents or mishaps when attempting to make a left turn from Harris Street to College Avenue.”
She said westbound motorists can’t see drivers making the “straight shot” across Harris Street “until it is too late and (they’re) right up on each other.”
The east-west College Avenue intersects the north-south Harris Street at the top of a hill about a quarter mile from the Grambling State University campus.
To the west of the intersection are several apartment complexes, single-family residences, and a back entrance to the Johns Manville plant that neighbors say is used by 18-wheelers.
Yellow plastic ribbons are tied to lowhanging overhead Harris Street is a residential street that deadends both north and south.
Wayne Bowden has lived on Harris Street for more than 40 years.
“It’s always been a dangerous intersection,” he said. In October 2021, residents brought the situation to the attention of former Mayor Ed Jones and Grambling Police Chief Tommy Clark.
The city erected a small “Dangerous Intersection” sign, on top of which is a batterypowered sign that’s supposed to flash the approaching motorist’s speed.
But it hasn’t worked since at least January, Clark said.
She called the situation “something that needs to be tended to very soon.”
Mary Rabon said the sign needs to be bigger and further back from the intersection.
“You don’t even see that sign until you get up that hill,” she said.
Rabon said she’s had several near misses at the corner by Clark’s house. Now, Rabon said she makes the left turn very quickly.
Bowden wants a fourway stop at the intersection, rather than just the existing two-way on Harris Street.
Clark has suggested yellow speed bumps, increasing police patrol, and a regular schedule for cutting the grass on the right-of-way. Late last week, the grass was over a foot high and obscured the sidewalk on the north side of College Avenue.
