By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

TURNER – A plan to slow traffic on Route 4 includes reducing the number of lanes in some areas, such as at the Chickadee restaurant near the Auburn-Turner line.

That’s part of a traffic initiative announced Tuesday by state and county officials, who also unveiled four new signs urging drivers to use their headlights while driving on the busy highway.

“The speed limit here is 55 mph, and we get people going 65, 70, 75,” said Capt. Ray Lafrance of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department.

“You can put out cruisers and run radar all day long and we still pick them up at 75,” he said. “That’s unacceptable, and it has to change.”

The signs are up, but more permanent changes are planned for the future, said Bruce Ibarguen, traffic engineer for MDOT. Engineers propose to reduce the number of lanes on Route 4 this spring. Crews would repaint sections of the road to make it three lanes in a few places, creating a northbound lane, a southbound lane and a turning lane in the middle. Officials had not fully decided which areas would get reduced lanes.

Another idea is to add medians or rumble strips between lanes.

“The point is, it reduces speed,” he said. “You still have collisions, but they are not as serious. You don’t have people getting killed.”

Police hope four yellow and blue signs urging drivers to turn on their lights while traveling through Turner will help. The signs went up along the road Tuesday morning, two on the southbound side and two on the northbound side.

Troopers from the Maine State Police joined deputies and engineers from the Maine Department of Transportation on Tuesday to kick off the effort and unveil the signs.

Troopers and deputies will also be paying special attention to drivers along the 12-mile stretch between Auburn and Turner in the coming weeks. That’s the most dangerous road in the county, according to Lafrance, and one of the more dangerous in the state, according to Maj. Timothy Doyle of the Maine State Police.

“We have a stealth car and that will be out,” Doyle said. “We might even try to do some special enforcement with the Sheriff’s Department.”

But this latest effort is more about awareness and persuading people to slow down than traffic enforcement.

“If the signs make you think for that moment while you’re turning on your headlights, you might slow down,” Doyle said.

The road gets as many as 8,000 drivers a day, Lafrance said. There have been more than 25 fatal accidents along the stretch over the past 15 years. Most have been head-on collisions.

“That’s the kind of society we live in, where people are in a hurry and not paying attention to what they’re doing,” Lafrance said. “We just want them to pay attention and understand: They have to slow down.”