Over the next two months, traffic signals at 10 intersections throughout the city of Minot will be returned to operation, the city announced late last week.
The first of the lights to be repaired were the signals at 27th Street Southeast and Burdick Expressway, which were fully operational last week. The other nine locations on the priority list will be repaired over the next eight weeks.
The city could not repair the signals using Federal Emergency Management Agency funding because the flood-damaged signals were along federal-aid roads. The city is working with the North?Dakota Department of Transportation to repair the signals.
The repairs can't happen quickly enough, in our opinion.
For more than a year now, drivers have approached the intersections with flashing traffic lights or no lights at all with extreme caution, slowly proceeding through an intersection with extreme caution, especially during peak traffic times, which in Minot lately, seems to be pretty much all day long.
Once the signals are repaired and fully operational again, drivers will again have to adjust, this time to having working traffic signals as usual. But it will be a welcome change, for sure. We've witnessed far too many fender-benders and near-misses at intersections throughout the city in the past year. Restoring the traffic signals will simply be another positive step in Minot's recovery.