Eagar warns of Main Street delays for new HAWK crossing work

Drivers on US 180B, known locally as Main Street, will face short but repeated delays at 6th Avenue as crews install a new HAWK crossing in the heart of Eagar. The Town of Eagar said Arizona Department of Transportation work will run Thursday, May 14, and Friday, May 15, from 8 to 10 a.m., with intermittent closures that could hold traffic for up to 10 minutes at a time.

Officers will be on-site to direct vehicles through the zone while the crosswalk is striped and the signals are installed. The town said the new crossing is scheduled to go live Thursday, May 21, giving drivers and pedestrians a clear date for when the work should shift from construction disruption to regular use.

The project is meant to create a safer crossing on a corridor that carries both local traffic and vehicles passing through southern Apache County. Eagar sits north of Apache National Forest and at the foot of the White Mountains, where Main Street serves school trips, errands, deliveries and commuter traffic in a compact downtown setting. The new crossing is intended to give pedestrians a protected way across the roadway without forcing traffic to stop all day.

ADOT lists the project cost at $362,118 and says the work includes HAWK signals, signal poles, a painted designated crosswalk and ADA ramps. The agency describes the pedestrian hybrid beacon as a device that stays dark until a pedestrian presses the call button. Once activated, the beacon moves through a yellow-to-red sequence that stops motorists only when someone needs to cross.

The installation has already taken longer than ADOT first expected. A Jan. 6 notice said work would begin the week of Jan. 12 with weekday lane restrictions from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., along with shoulder and sidewalk closures, and the project was originally expected to finish by the end of February. ADOT later updated the projected completion to late spring 2026.

ADOT identified AJP Electrical Inc. as the contractor for the Main Street and 6th Avenue crossing. The project was advertised as a 2025 bid opening on May 23, 2025. ADOT also notes that the first pedestrian hybrid beacon was developed in Tucson in 2000 and has since been used in communities including Bullhead City, Bylas, Flagstaff, Sierra Vista and the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.