The County Line
Here is a little story of what you could call historic irony.
In 1923 an expert electrician with the U.S. Navy named Leslie Haines returned to his hometown of Carmel. In his work shop, he invented an automated stop-and-go light, the first in Indiana and one of the first in the nation.
Haines convinced the town fathers that his invention should be used at the intersection of Range Line Road and Main Street in Carmel. At that time Range Line Road was U.S. 31 and experiencing increasingly heavy traffic.
Noblesville and other Indiana communities later purchased Haines’ signals. Obviously the electric signals caught on to the point where people now complain of too many stoplights in many areas.
About 75 years after Haines’ invention, Carmel’s mayor, Jim Brainard, decided that a new method of managing intersection traffic should be tried. Carmel took the lead in introducing the roundabout to central Indiana.
Now, we find that most traffic lights in Carmel are to be replaced by roundabouts. What would Les Haines think about this? He might be OK with it since he was mainly looking for traffic control. But, he would likely be happy to know that the intersection he first signalized is not scheduled for a roundabout.
One of Haines’ early signals is on display at the Carmel Historical Society depot museum. He’d probably be happy to know that, too.