A short section of Pocahontas Road will be closed for up to seven days, starting Monday, May 5, as a contractor begins a project to realign the intersection where Pocahontas Road and Hughes Lane meet 10th Street in north Baker City.

Pocahontas Road will be closed just west of the intersection, said Vicki Moles, public information officer for the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Region 5 office in La Grande.

A detour will be in place, Moles said.

There will still be access to Saint Alphonsus Medical Center-Baker City and businesses along Pocahontas Road, Moles said. Drivers won’t be able to drive east across the intersection from Pocahontas or turn north onto Highway 30, turn from 10th Street onto Pocahontas, or continue west from Hughes Lane across 10th Street.

After the Pocahontas closure, a short section of Hughes Lane just east of the intersection will be closed for up to two weeks, Moles said.

Neither of the closures will affect northbound and southbound traffic on 10th Street and Highway 30.

ODOT’s contractor, Moreno & Nelson Construction of Walla Walla, Washington, will realign the intersection to make for easier turning angles for trucks. The streets do not intersect at 90-degree angles.

The work is scheduled to be finished by November 2025.

ODOT officials considered multiple options for the intersection, including building a roundabout and installing a traffic signal.

Although a roundabout “would address the safety concerns, it would create a large impact to the adjacent landowners,” according to an ODOT summary of the project, the agency decided a roundabout was not feasible.

As for a traffic signal, according to ODOT, the number of crashes at the intersection did not meet minimum requirements, under the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, to justify a traffic signal.

According to ODOT, there have been 19 reported crashes at the intersection over the past decade, 10 of which resulted in “moderate” injuries and two involving “minor” injuries.

During a safety study in June 2022, a remote camera recorded what ODOT described as 88 “near-miss” incidents at the intersection in 24 hours.

According to ODOT, installing a signal at the intersection could lead to “significant increases in the frequency of collisions, especially rear-end collisions,” as well as “excessive delays, a higher number of motorists ignoring traffic signals and increased use of side roads as drivers attempt to avoid the traffic control signals.”