Viewer Asks When Traffic Signal Will Be Installed

What does it take to get a traffic light installed? An ABC-7 viewer asked the station to find out. She said it’s a matter of life or death.

The emailer who identified herself as “Sandra” wrote, “Last year, a boy was killed at Zaragoza and Sun Fire. Many parents, teachers, and students wrote letters requesting that the city install traffic lights, but nothing has been done.”

Sandra said the City of El Paso promised to install traffic lights after that letter writing campaign. “Now our students have started a new school year and this intersection still remains extremely dangerous,” she said. “Do we have to experience another fatal accident, so the city can install traffic lights?”

That fatal wreck happened last November. Police said a 14 year-old boy took his mother’s car without permission, and ran a stop sign. Fourteen year-old Hector Heredia was a passenger in the car. Heredia was killed when the car was broadsided by a sports utility vehicle.

A traffic light would have been more visible than a stop sign, but no one knows whether the driver would have stopped for that, either.

ABC-7 has learned a traffic signal is planned for that intersection, but it’s part of a bigger project. And the city is not the agency responsible.

The Texas Department of Transportation plans to build a connecting ramp that will take traffic straight from Loop 375 North to the eastbound lanes of Zaragoza Road. The ramp will extend to the intersection of Zaragoza and Sun Fire Blvd.

TexDoT engineer Edgar Fino said the holdup is because, “The signal can’t be installed until the rest of the construction is finished. If they put one in now, they’d have to take it right back out to do the other work.”

The project is scheduled to begin in January, 2012.