I have lived in the Anniston Metro for the last six years now. Can you believe I have never gone to Betty’s BBQ in Anniston? Yeah, me either! After I got a $10 gift certificate for Betty’s BBQ, I decided to go and try them out!
Betty’s BBQ is located along South Quintard Ave. in Anniston. They specialize in BBQ, chicken tenders and fried chicken, fried catfish, and of course, down home sides like mom used to make it. When I went around 1 pm, there was a good crowd there! I was seated quickly and the server got me some sweet tea which was good! I got a BBQ Pork plate with three sides for $7.99. The food came in five minutes, that was some quick service! My three sides were macaroni and cheese, fries, and corn on the cob. The plate comes with BBQ Pork with sauce and some BBQ bread. This was a good amount of food for the money!
The BBQ pork was very tender and good. The BBQ sauce certainly had a good flavor. I really liked the macaroni and cheese as it was creamy and good! The server kept checking and making sure I had plenty of sweet tea. I really liked the service at Betty’s BBQ. My server then recommended I get some pie, so I got a piece of peanut butter pie with some whipped cream!
The peanut butter pie was awesome! It had good peanut butter flavor and they used a crumbled pie crust. It is definitely something I would consider getting!
Betty’s BBQ is a restaurant that features down home cooking. I would recommend you come and try this place. Yes, I will be back! Betty’s BBQ is located at 401 South Quintard Ave. in Anniston Alabama. You can reach them by phone at 256-237-1411.
This week I wanted to talk about some traffic lights along Quintard Ave. that are still malfunctioning! The lights along Quintard at 10th St., 8th St. (AL-202), and Greenbrier Dear Rd. are still going through light cycles when no one is there to trigger the lights. The 10th St. and 8th St. lights are malfunctioning because ped signals to cross Quintard Ave. are still malfunctioning. The ped signal buttons are broken and that causes the ped signals to go to walk on each cycle when they are not supposed too. I have talked about these lights being broken since Summer 2012!
When these lights are malfunctioning, it causes short green light times on Quintard Ave. During the day time, this causes major traffic backups. If no one is paying attention, this causes accidents.
If you drive along AL-21 / Quintard Dr. in Oxford. You are noticing every traffic light intersection is being replaced with new traffic light poles and new traffic lights. One intersection has already been replaced. The Quintard Dr. / AL-21 and Snow St. intersection has brand new light poles and traffic lights. Also, new traffic light sensors have been put in. One big problem already is the short amount of time given for cars wanting to turn left onto Snow St. Multiple cars are running the red light. Watch the video below!
Quintard Dr. / Snow St. Red Light Running
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Here is what the intersection looked like before.
And here is what the intersection looks like today.
Brand new traffic light sensors were installed. My question is how long they will last? The construction people did a bad job putting the cables in the ground. You can easily see where they cut into the ground.
The next intersection at AL-21 / Quintard Dr. and U.S. 78 / Hamric Dr. is undergoing a traffic light replacement. As you can see, another poor job laying the cables in the ground. You can see how dim these traffic lights are. Glad they are being replaced!
The new traffic lights and poles at Recreation Dr. and Quintard Dr. / AL-21 are already hung up. They just need to be turned on and the old traffic lights and poles taken down.
The traffic lights and poles at Quintard Dr. / AL-21 and Grace St. are going to be replaced soon. And the traffic lights and poles at Quintard Dr. / AL-21 and Plaza Ln. are already replaced. The traffic light sensors have not been activated yet.
Overall, this project was badly needed! I hope the state has plans to synchronize all of these lights!
This is one of those posts that I wish I would never have to do because I would have thought that these problems along Quintard Ave. would be fixed by now. But sadly, these problems are still going on. The lights along Quintard Ave. at the intersections of Greenbrier Dear Rd., 8th St., and 10th St. are still malfunctioning. This has been going on for months now! The Greenbrier Dear Rd. light has broken traffic sensors. And the lights at 8th St. and 10th St. have malfunctioning ped signals. During certain times of the day, traffic on Quintard only gets around 30 seconds of green light time while the side streets gets 35-40 seconds of green light time because of the malfunctioning ped signals.
Because of the short green light time for traffic on Quintard Ave. Traffic often backs up and this almost causes accidents.
Since so much traffic backs up. Traffic turning from 10th St. can not clear the intersection and get out-of-the-way. Here is an example of one car not able to clear the intersection. This is dangerous!
Here is video showing the traffic light problems along Quintard Ave. at 8th St. and 10th St. I wonder how long it will be before this gets fixed for good?
Each year the City of Anniston places many Christmas lights in the median along Quintard Ave. Quintard is a 6-lane boulevard that also carries U.S. 431 and AL-21. It takes the workers a couple of weeks to string up the lights on the trees and bushes along Quintard. And it makes the median look very beautiful! Enjoy the pictures of the Christmas lights along Quintard Ave.
I have done several posts highlighting some of the road problems in the Anniston area and sadly; none of them have been fixed yet. First is the light on U.S. 431 at Lindale Dr./W. 43rd St. This is video from April 2012 which I shot. And sadly nothing has been done to stop having this light turn red on U.S. 431 when no one is there!
In this video I took on Black Friday I went to see if several traffic lights around Anniston are still malfunctioning. Sadly I saw the same traffic light intersections along Quintard Ave. and Noble St. that are still messed up. And while I watched these lights I saw several drivers ignore the red light and drive right on through. These late night drivers know these lights are malfunctioning and they will not sit there and I don’t blame them! In the video below you will see one driver blowing a red light.
This other video shows the malfunctioning 10th St. @ Quintard Ave. ped signal from many angles. Also included is the Quintard Ave. at Greenbrier Dear Road intersection. When Quintard Ave. is only getting 30-35 seconds of green light time that is not good.
When Noble St. in downtown was re-done every intersection received new traffic lights and ped signals. Today just about every intersection has some issues. The biggest issue I see is the green poles are starting to rust!
At the 10th st. and 14th st. intersections the ped signals are on walk at midnight while side traffic has to sit there for no reason. I have seen some cars including a police officer run the red light.
At the 10th st. intersection the push button to cross Noble St. is not working. Many bar hoppers have crossed Noble St. almost getting hit by a car.
The Noble St. at 11th St. light is on blinking mode at midnight. I thought all the lights along Noble St. in downtown should be on 24/7?
At Noble St. and 12th St. The ped signal to go across Noble St. is malfunctioning.
I also see several ped signals burnt out and turned the wrong way especially at the Noble St. and 15th St. intersection.
The traffic light on AL-202 and Hunter St. needs to be checked!
The traffic light at 10th St. and Quintard Ave. really needs to be checked. One of the ped signal push buttons are broken and this results in major traffic backups! When you see traffic blocking other intersections and traffic being stopped at the next light because of a malfunction you know its bad!
This button is broken!
I would say every traffic light along Noble St. in downtown needs to be checked! Also the traffic lights along Quintard Ave. at 10th st, 8th st. (AL-202) and Greenbrier Dear Rd. are malfunctioning as well. Here is an earlier post showing more road problems in Anniston.
I recently met the new mayor elect of Anniston Vaughn Stewart. And I was glad he knew about me and this blog Geek Alabama. So after he told me I was a big road geek (thanks) I went around to trouble spots in Anniston that needs addressing. First I made another video showing all of the traffic light problems I found. This first video shows how many people just ignore a traffic light with the power out. And the second video shows traffic light problems along Noble St. and Quintard Ave.
So let’s first talk about the road paint lines. I took these photos along Coleman Rd. and yes you can not even tell where the road paint lines should be at!
Also along 10th Street and Noble St. where they repaved the road. They have not added the permanent road paint lines yet! Months later and now it is getting hard to see where the center line of the road is at. If you can’t see the road paint lines it makes the road very dangerous!
I also can’t get this out of my mind. Last time the city went around to re-paint the road lines. They painted some of the lines yellow when it should have been white. One example is at Red Morris Pkwy.
Also along Red Morris Pkwy. and Spring Valley Rd. there are some very bad dips along the road that can cause a flat tire! Why have these road problems not been fixed yet?
Up Golden Springs Rd. I approach the new intersection at Henry Rd. that is fast becoming a death trap. What needs to happen is those yield signs needs to be replaced with stop signs. And stop signs needs to be placed where traffic turns left onto Henry Rd. as well!
And what about this school signal along the old portion of Henry Rd. to slow traffic at The Donoho School. This is just too funny! And yes; it needs to be moved!
In downtown along Noble St.; some of the ped signals are burned out. And some of the ped signals are turned away and not facing the people wanting to cross the street. And I even tested the push buttons at 10th Street/Noble St. and some of them don’t even work! So in my opinion; all of the traffic lights in downtown along Noble St. needs to be checked and re-timed.
Last thing; when I travel down Quintard Ave. I sometimes see someone who has to try to cross this road at a traffic light intersection without the aid of ped signals. Sure some intersections have ped signals but why don’t the other traffic light intersections along Quintard Ave. have ped signals? This needs to change!
I would encourage the new mayor of Anniston Vaughn Stewart to allow me to show him the other road problems I know about in Anniston. Anniston’s streets have been neglected for a long time and it needs to be changed!
Last weekend I caught a few bad drivers in the act along Quintard Ave. This first bad driver had a green arrow to turn left but decided to stop in the middle because of a red light that does not apply to this driver. If I had not pulled up to trigger the light that driver would have been sitting there for a long time.
Then along Quintard Ave. a car stopped in the middle of the left lane because of the backed up cars wanting to turn left. This happens a lot on Quintard Ave. If you are turning left off Quintard Ave. the red light does not apply to you. When it’s clear you can go! I have seen cars sitting there for over 10 minutes before they realize the light will not turn for them.
At this intersection. You see two cars backed up and not going because the driver does not know to ignore the red light. The red light is for traffic wanting to cross Quintard Ave.
The gray truck has a green arrow to turn left. But the truck has to go into the lane going straight which might cause an accident. All of this has got to be corrected!
I would put the lights in each intersection along Quintard Ave. in the middle so drivers turning left would not sit there for no reason. I think you can agree this is one screwed up situation. I am also including a bonus video showing a train around Walter Wellborn High School. This was a good shot!
If you have been reading Geek Alabama for a while you know I am in a very worrying mood! You get that way when you have been unemployed for 14 months and are trying to find your 14th job in seven years. After the high school football games last Friday night I got back in that worrying mood and I wondered what to do next. So I decided to walk along Quintard Ave. at 2am in the morning and take a few photos. The quiet Quintard Ave. at 2am is soothing as you walk along the quiet highway. I also like to watch the traffic lights turn and pressing the buttons to activate the ped signals. The first photo is a shot of the downtown Anniston skyline from AL-202. The rest of the photos are of various buildings and shots along Quintard Ave.
I am glad that Vaughn Stewart won the mayor seat in Anniston. Plus many city councilmen are going to be replaced as well including the controversial Ben Little. Many people are commenting online about what needs to happen to Anniston so it can reclaim its glory. I have a couple of ideas which I think will help the people who live in this area plus it will help Anniston come back. Many people have talked about the crime problem in Anniston and unless the city puts the smack down on crime nothing will change. The saying is Anniston has the 4th worst crime rate in the country for a city its size. When you read that statistic; who is going to want to move to Anniston? Anniston has got to do a better job in retaining police officers and training police officers to do a superior job in the city. I would also invest in community watch programs so the citizens can have a say in preventing crime in the city.
Jobs are another problem in Anniston. I have been unemployed for 14 months now and I am sure many other people have been unemployed for a long time now as well. I get very discouraged when I go down to the career center or look online and I see the same things every day with not much new listings. Anniston needs to work with other cities and the chamber to put together a plan to recruit new businesses. Anniston needs a strategic plan for the next 5-10 years and it needs to re-develop the McClellan property and downtown so its ready for businesses to move in. I find these two issues as the biggest problems in Anniston right now but I am going to talk about a few lesser-known issues.
I would also like to see more programs to see our kids being engaged in Anniston. A few programs have already started up but I believe we need more. I would also like to see better ways to direct drivers in Anniston. If you see an 18-wheeler turning around in the middle of the road because of bad signage you know that’s dangerous. We need to put up bigger road name signs at our traffic light intersections like they do in Birmingham and Georgia.
I would also like to see better signage pointing drivers to the area points of interests in Anniston. Many cities do this and I am sure Anniston can do this as well.
If Anniston also wants to become the eco-tourism hot spot that I know it can become we need to maintain our streets better. I would like to see some streets have bike lanes on them. The city could easily take out the center lane on certain streets and replace them with bike lanes. I would also like to see the Chief Ladiga trail extended into downtown Anniston which should have been done a long time ago.
I would also like to see some intersections re-done as roundabouts. I believe Anniston has a few too many traffic lights in the city and some of the traffic light intersections could be easily redone as a roundabout. Roundabouts are safer than both traffic circles and junctions—having 40% fewer vehicle collisions, 80% fewer injuries and 90% fewer serious injuries and fatalities. Oxford leaders have refused the idea of making the Friendship Rd. and Leon Smith Parkway intersection a roundabout which is a shame. Anniston could prove the Oxford leaders wrong.
I also would like to see something done about Quintard Ave. Many people have chimed in about the traffic light timings and the traffic. When a car trying to cross Quintard Ave. has to block the left lane to wait for traffic to get through it’s an accident waiting to happen.
I also have a few videos below that shows how bad the lights are on Quintard Ave. When it’s 10am on a weekday 35 seconds for a green light on Quintard Ave. is not enough time.
Here is another video showing all of traffic light problems in Anniston and Oxford. I hope Vaughn Stewart and the new city councilmen will address these problems.
So I hope that the new mayor Vaughn Stewart and the new city councilmen will work together for a change and bring the Model City back. By the way Geek Alabama and me Nathan Young will be keeping an eye on this new city administration.
