PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. –A high trafficked intersection in Putnam County will soon see a new traffic pattern.
Bobby Eggleton
The WV Department of Highway announced last week that they found a contractor to realign the intersection of WV 869 and WV 817, which is the old US 35, at the Buffalo Bridge. The DOH awarded the contract to Bear Contracting LLC the project who bid over $6.3 million dollars.
Putnam County Sheriff Bobby Eggleton said that the issue with the intersection needs to be addressed because of safety concerns because there are constant wrecks that the department is called too.
“You know we work crashes down there on a constant basis and you can’t put a price tag on life when it comes to making things safe,” he said.
The realignment will allow motorists traveling on the four-lane upgrade to US 35 a straight shot to the bridge.
He said the most people he sees traveling the bridge are commercial vehicles.
He said that it’s been a problem since he was elected as the sheriff in 2020.
“I’ve been the sheriff going on five years now and we’ve always had issues down that way,” he said.
While he said he hasn’t had time to look at the plans that the DOH has for the intersection he said he’s all for whatever they have planned to reduce the number of wrecks and hopefully the speeding issue as well.
“The speed down there can get out of control, we have a lot of out-of-staters that run through that area and they don’t understand that it’s not a controlled access freeway, it’s not an interstate, that there are people coming and going, so anything they can do like that to improve the safety, I’m all in favor of,” Eggleton said.
Photo: DOH website