COVINGTON, La. — There’s no hesitation when you ask north shore drivers about Highway 190 these days as it undergoes $9.1 million in road work between Interstate 12 and the Claiborne Hill overpass.
“Whew! It’s terrible on 190,” Bogalusa resident Dorothy Williams said.
“It’s awful,” said Covington resident Kayla Porch. “I live exactly two-and-a-half miles from where I work, and it takes me upwards of 20 minutes to get to the office.”
The frustration is up, especially after a few days recently when the usually busy roadway was unusually backed up.
The issue causing the worse-than-normal traffic along one of St. Tammany Parish’ main roadways was with stoplights. That led parish President Pat Brister to write to the state DOTD with her concerns.
“I personally witnessed this debacle, and I am confident that we can both agree that this is a traffic nightmare that must be corrected immediately,” Brister wrote in part.
She said help can’t come soon enough.
“It must be the lights at this point, because while the traffic was heavy during the construction, it was not like the last week,” she said. “That’s when it really just started backing up.”
The DOTD said that last week it replaced a controller box and camera that were blowing fuses.
“Since we made those repairs, we have seen improvements in traffic flow,” said DOTD spokesman Rodney Mallett.
He said the project is in between phases, so only some of the new stoplights are working. Until all of them are turned on, stoplights have been retimed to give priority to traffic moving north and south on 190.