A bright red line of brake lights stretched for two miles along a narrow secondary road next to Interstate 65 as temporary employees at Amazon’s mammoth fulfillment center in Whitestown made their way home Wednesday (Dec. 4) evening.
Similar lines of red snaked south along Indianapolis Avenue and other routes away from the distribution center on Albert S. White Boulevard.
At the Interstate 65 interchange with Whitestown Parkway (formerly Indiana 334), westbound drivers were backed up beyond County Road 650 East as a police officer stood in the glare of portable work lights, waiting as two companions, wearing bright lime green reflective vests and wielding flashlights tipped with orange cones, coordinated traffic flow.
From November through early December, this has been the scene as workers at Amazon’s distribution center have clogged roads in southern Boone County, as the online business adds about 3,000 employees – for a total of about 5,000 – to deal with a rush of holiday shoppers.
Those traffic jams may be over.
Friday, Amazon announced plans to help alleviate the congestion.
Nina Lindsey, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company is listening to town officials and residents, and will make some changes.
“We are working closely with local authorities to help manage traffic in surrounding areas,” Lindsey said via email Friday.
“Some steps we are taking include staggering our shifts, staffing our parking lot with attendants and hiring several police officers to direct traffic during shift changes,” she said. “Additional measures include an Amazon shuttle bus service for associates and encouraging associates to carpool to reduce the number of cars on the road.”
“They’re bouncing everything 15 minutes per shift,” Whitestown Police Chief Dennis Anderson said Friday, “so that gives us 45 minutes from the time the last shift release happens until the next shift is reporting in.”
“They kind of started yesterday,” Anderson said. The extra time eliminated all of the traffic congestion, he said.
“It is definitely going to make a major impact,” he said. The last two mornings, officers doing traffic control were able to leave before normal commuting patterns developed.
“We’re going to see how it goes tonight,” Anderson said. “The weather will have an impact; we just don’t know to what extent.”
The traffic pattern originally developed to cope with the holiday traffic “was not designed ... for dumping all of those cars at one time,” Anderson said.
Changes to the northbound offramp from I-65 to Albert S. White Boulevard (County Road 400 South), the only direct route into Amazon’s parking lot, had eased but not eliminated the traffic congestion, Anderson said.
A 24-hour traffic count on Dec. 12, 2012, showed 5,154 vehicles used the I-65 northbound off ramp and 3,367 the southbound on ramp at Indiana 267. That data contributed to the Indiana Department of Transportation’s decision to build a “slip ramp”
so that Amazon-bound drivers could merge right on a dedicated turn lane to Albert S. White Boulevard, while drivers heading for Ind. 267 take a left-hand lane.
The slip ramp is “doing its job,” Anderson said. “For the most part, I think the slip ramp is doing exactly what the INDOT folks thought it would.”
Problems developed in Amazon’s parking lots when managers opted to dismiss an entire shift at one time.
“They physically (couldn’t) get the vehicles out of the parking lots as fast as they (were) coming in,” Anderson said.
“They got on phone with corporate, got approval to make shift adjustments, and needed 72 hours to get those improvements in place,” Anderson said. “Going into next week, it should be better,” he said.
Area residents had expressed frustration with the seasonal jams.
Jennifer Anderson, who lives in Eagles Nest subdivision on Indianapolis Road, described the traffic backup on I-65 as “a hot mess.”
“It’s a huge problem,” she said. “It’s irritating to the community.”
“We want Amazon here, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “We want that tax base; I don’t think anybody is unhappy with them being here.”
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