A meeting was recently held in Jefferson where the major topic was about safety concerns on the county roadways.

Greene County Engineer Wade Weiss tells Raccoon Valley Radio Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams, Jefferson Police Chief Mark Clouse, along with representatives from the Greene County Ambulance Department and Greene County Farm Bureau went over a Safety Action Plan (SAP).

“This was about allowing us to look at certain segments in our roadway system there are problem areas shown by the fatality crash or a serious injury crash. And that we would have an opportunity to look at those roadway segments, look at curves inside those roadway segments, (and) intersections inside that.”  

Weiss notes a lot of what was identified in the SAP are items that the Secondary Roads Department has addressed, including installing chevron signage on curves, reflective tape on sign poles, widening roadways and having paved shoulders on certain roadways. He highlights two areas in the county that were discussed a lot, included County E-53 from Grand Junction to Scranton and County Road N-65 north of Scranton. Weiss points out the biggest concerns were needing paved shoulders and painted edge lines of the roads.

“The paved shoulder portion of it is very costly. The painting of the edge line, we look at those high traffic areas or if we have issues, where we can get that painted. We paint about ten percent of the pavements with edge line. We’re going to look at maybe doing that. They’d like to see us paint a six inch line versus a four inch line. So some of it is very minor.”      

Weiss adds that now there is an SAP in place, they can apply for additional federal funding that is earmarked specifically to improve road safety, with the Safe Streets and Roads for All program. He says the goal is to review the SAP every five years.