LaCrosse residents continue to deal with closure of State Road 8

LAPORTE COUNTY, Ind. -- A road closure in LaPorte County has had residents frustrated since February.

The closure along State Road 8 stretches down US Road 421 to State Road 39.

Residents say they’re just ready for the road to be back open.

Beginning on US 421, and all the way to State Road 39, State Road 8 has been closed since February, allowing only local residents access to their homes.

“It’s definitely really frustrating with it being closed, trying to get to LaPorte you have to detour through the country,” said Justin Kiel, resident and LaCrosse Town Council President. “I’m ready for it to be reopened.”

Adam Parkhouse of the Indiana Department of Transportation said the record flooding in February is to blame for State Road 8’s closure.

“We had water that was standing on the roadway. Not just standing, but literally flowing over the roadway," said Parkhouse.

Just like Kiel, Parkhouse recognizes that the road closures are frustrating to drivers and the public.

“It’s certainly an inconvenience. We understand that, we sympathize with that and we have been working quickly to fix this issue,” said Parkhouse. “But it does take some time to not only to identify what the problem is, but to identify the fixes for those problems. All that takes time, we did expedite this project as much as we possibly could.”

The good news is that the road closure is only expected to last until the end of September.

But until then, Parkhouse is asking the public to obey the road closure signs.

“We’re just kind of waiting at this point. We understand that they’re working on it and there’s not that much the town can do to speed that along at this point,” said Kiel, who among many just cannot wait for State Road 8 to be back open again.

“Yeah, definitely that’ll be exciting, once that’s reopened. And we’ll be excited for 421 to be repaved so we’ll have some nice stretches of road coming in and out of town,” he said.