(Guadalupe County) — If you ask Guadalupe County Commissioner Pct. 4 Stephen Germann, there is “indeed” light at the end of the tunnel.
For Germann, that light comes in the form of a traffic signal that is now on its way up at the FM 1044 and FM 78 intersection just east of Marion.
For months, Germann has spent much of his time urging that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) seriously consider moving up its plan to install a traffic-control signal at that intersection. Germann says over the years, that intersection has been witness to a record number of accidents – accidents all involving, vehicles, big rigs and even trains.
“When I was running for office and I took office in January of last year, people were already telling me if you get elected, please work on this and yes, I do drive that intersection myself and my family does too so we already knew it was an issue but what really got it to the forefront was when I started getting the traffic queries and realizing that we were averaging collision somewhere around every two to three weeks so that really put it to the forefront. We’ve got to do something here.
Someone is going to get killed and I just prayed that no one got killed and I started going to every wreck too and there were some really bad ones. There were some people who were really lucky in some of these wrecks that they were not killed and so I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and no was not an acceptable answer,” said Germann.
The Guadalupe County Commissioners Court also did its part to put some pressure on TxDOT.
Not only did it approve a resolution, but the county forwarded a petition to state leaders that included 1,000 signatures from residents who also wanted to see the project expedited.
Germann says at times, he felt as though the project wasn’t moving from the back burner. But today, he says he is grateful to finally have some results.
“When they got the crash queries from me and then every time there was a wreck, I would call. I would say, we have another one. We had another one yesterday. We had two yesterday and I think that keeping it in the spotlight made a big difference. It made a huge difference,” said Germann.
Although TxDOT is on site and has officially begun the work, the traffic signal isn’t expected to be completely operational until late December.