Lawrence and Douglas County officials aren’t in a hurry to speed up plans for congestion-easing traffic signals along a busy street in southeast Lawrence.

Not with a $110 million highway project in limbo and multimillion-dollar budget deficits looming.

“I haven’t had a huge inundation of people calling in, complaining that the delay is terrible and that we have to do something,” said Chuck Soules, the city’s director of public works. “If there’s not a big push to do it — with the budgets everybody’s facing — maybe we could both use the money elsewhere.”

But Soules’ analysis isn’t stopping city and county officials from mapping out a strategy for two intersections along 31st Street: at Louisiana Street and at Haskell Avenue.

Loss of productivity

Both spots are considered among the city’s most frustrating intersections, Soules said, at least during evening rush hour. During the “peak” hour, drivers spend an average of 60 seconds to get past Louisiana Street and 81 seconds more to drive through Haskell Avenue.

With temporary traffic signals installed at each intersection, drivers could expect to save 24 seconds per trip at Louisiana and nearly a minute per trip at Haskell.

Soules figures that would be enough to save the route’s 14,000 daily drivers nearly $150,000 a year in lost productivity — easily enough to pay for the signals in the first place.

“For the community as a whole, you could show it’s well worth the money,” Soules said.

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But questions remain.

The biggest involves the fate of the South Lawrence Trafficway.

Federal officials are reviewing regulatory documents related to the controversial road, which would build a new Kansas Highway 10 to connect Iowa Street south of Lawrence with Noria Road southeast of town.

Along the way, it would move 31st Street off the Haskell Indian Nations University campus, and relocate the street’s intersections with Louisiana and Haskell.

But people and groups concerned about the proposed highway’s historical, environmental, social and other effects promise to fight the project’s backers in court — if, as expected, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approves the project’s needed paperwork later this summer.

Either way, there appeared to be little reason to rush to a conclusion about the intersections, said Keith Browning, the county’s engineer and director of public works.

“The question is whether something should be done on a temporary basis, until there can be a more permanent solution — either as a part of the SLT process or not,” Browning said.

The trafficway isn’t the only controversial vision in play for 31st Street.

Proposed options

Traffic-calming “roundabouts” are among the four suggestions forwarded to elected officials for review, when it comes to addressing the street’s traffic congestion.

Such roundabouts — traffic circles that allow traffic to pass through an intersection without stopping, as drivers entering the circle yield to those already inside — would cost about $75,000 at each intersection.

But there appears to be little support for such work. Two lanes of traffic in each direction would need to be squeezed into one to allow for the roundabout to work, and that’s only if people welcome the shift in driving patterns.

“They work, and they work really well, but there’s an acceptance issue throughout the public,” Soules said. “Lawrence has been pretty good about trying new things, but there are some people out there who don’t like them.”

Jere McElhaney, a county commissioner, is among them.

“We’re not interested in a roundabout,” he said, echoing the sentiment of his fellow commissioners.

Another option would be to install temporary signals with video equipment capable of sensing when a vehicle approaches the intersection, therefore allowing signals to adjust to different traffic patterns. Cost: $75,000 each.

Informally, county commissioners already have indicated support for financing part of the installation of temporary intersections at each intersection, once the trafficway issue is settled. Lawrence city commissioners are scheduled to review the possibilities during their next meeting, set to begin at 6:35 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts.