3rd/4th street two-way switch delayed; parody songs stand ready
New traffic pattern pushed back to October, after signal poles delayed. Until then, the story behind song parodies meant to get you to look both ways
The switch from one-way to two-way traffic on Third and Fourth streets through downtown Lafayette won’t be done until late October, city officials said Thursday.
The reason for the delay in a $1.94 million project initially scheduled to be done by the time schools opened in August: Traffic light poles are delayed from the manufacturer, Dennis Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, said.
“We are expecting them at the end of September and expect then to complete the project by mid- to late-October,” Carson said. “We will have most of the intersections, concrete, sidewalk and wiring/electrical complete in the next few weeks. Paving and permanent striping along with actual conversion will be after the poles come in and are erected.”
The plans include two-way traffic on Third and Fourth streets, between Wall and Alabama streets, including stretches that run on either side of the Tippecanoe County Courthouse. The city began talking about the project more than a year ago, in a position to convert the streets once they no longer were considered state roads. The state relinquished responsibility for Third and Fourth streets during the first phase of the U.S. 231 bypass project, which was in 2001, according to records kept by the Tippecanoe County Area Plan Commission.
The delay in the final reworking of the two streets also puts on ice some of the marketing built into the project.
That includes a set of song parodies, recorded locally and dubbed Two-Way Tunes, that have been chilling until the actual conversion gets closer.
Stephanie Bossung, vice president of account services for Indiana Design Consortium, was part of the marketing team hired by the Lafayette Redevelopment Commission this spring to help prepare for the shift in traffic after decades of one-way Third and Fourth streets.
“With us being a downtown business, the city knew we understood the need to have some public safety announcements around the changes,” Bossung said. “We walk to restaurants. We live in and work downtown. And so we know that we need to alert the public that, hey, these streets aren’t going to be what we’re used to.”
Bossung said the work will include signs on sidewalks and at intersections, reminding pedestrians about looking both ways rather than just one.
She said IDC wanted to come up with jingles of some sort to plant the idea in people’s heads. They settled on a set of song parodies crafted into 30-second radio and social media spots ready roll out in the weeks before the shift.
“It started with one song – Fleetwood Mac’s ‘You Can Go Your Own Way” – and change it to ‘you can now go two ways,’” Bossung said. “It kind of morphed into this campaign that’s called #TwoWayTunes.”
She said IDC wrote the lyrics, taking them to members of the Songwriters Association of Mid-north Indiana and the Rec Room Recording at The Art Federation in downtown Lafayette.
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