ODOT’s project to improve traffic safety on Highway 20 at Independence Highway is just about complete. For Midway Farms, the new traffic pattern still presents some concerns.
Improvements now getting started to prevent collisions on the Albany-Corvallis Highway may eventually help drivers, but they are creating headaches for the owner of Midway Farms, the small organic grocery and farm store on the highway near the junction with Independence Highway.
Independence Highway in Benton County has a nice new surface, and a section of the road is wider too, prompting a reader’s question for which the Answer Man hastened to obtain a response.
This is where Independence Highway runs into U.S. 20, the Albany Corvallis Highway. It’s a tricky place for making left turns on to 20, toward Albany, as one of these trucks is waiting to do.
Another bike-related update: We’ll have to wait at least another year before Benton County restores the wide shoulders that disappeared from a section of Independence Highway last year. And yes, it does matter to everybody on the road.
On Sunday I wondered where “the bike lane” went and complained that it was gone. Now I can report that Benton County obliterated it by mistake and intends to make it good next summer or late spring.
Albany-Corvallis Trail: One segment’s done
It was early in August when I took this photo. It’s on the south side of the new configuration of Highway 20 at Independence Highway, an ODOT safety project that had just been completed.
Tags: Albany-Corvallis Trail, Corvallis-Albany Trail, Highway 20, Independence Highway, Linda Modrell, multi-use path, ODOT, Spring Hill to Scenic