MADRAS, OR -- Oregon’s Department of Transportation hosts a meeting Wednesday, to discuss the public's concerns about safety in the Highway 97 corridor between Madras and Terrebonne. ODOT Principal Planner Ken Shonkwiler says it's part of a long-term study, "We’re actually not focused on ‘how to fix it.’ We want to look at and get the public’s agreement on where the issues are at."

He tells KBND News closing intersections, like what happened at Bear Drive three years ago, isn’t practical for every trouble-spot, "There’s not a silver bullet for the crash fixes that happen on this corridor. Bear Drive intersection was unique, because the sight distance was horrible, it was a skewed intersection; and that’s just not the same issue that we have at some of our other intersections and segments, nor is it represented in the crash types. So, it is more of a holistic look at safety." And he says many options are on the table, "We might look at adding turn lanes, we might look at consolidating accesses, maybe realigning intersections."

Shonkwiler says, "Part of what we’ve done recently is pulled together our most recent five years of crash data; we have a participant advisory committee that we got feedback from last week on these areas with safety issues. This next step, we want to take these issues and locations to the public and see if they agree with us." He says they want to know, "‘Do these locations make sense to you? Are there locations that we have maybe not considered, to include in our report? And, are we on the right track?’ Those are really the questions that we are asking the public right now."

Wednesday's open house is 5-7 p.m. at the Madras Performing Arts Center. There’s also an online survey available through May third. More meetings are planned before a final report is completed early next year.