MADISON COUNTY, Ind. — Nearly two years after a crash sent three teenagers to the hospital, Madison County neighbors are expressing concerns that the congested intersection where the crash happened has only gotten worse.

Every rush hour cars go flying down State Road 13 while traffic on Country Road 800 waits in lines, looking for a sliver of a window to get onto SR 13. 

Neighbors said they have been asking for a stoplight for years now to make the intersection safer.

“I tell everyone I love they are not allowed to come to 800 and 13,” said Carrie Ashley, who lives less than a mile from the intersection.

Ashley has lived in the area for 20 years and said she has watched the intersection of CR 800 and SR 13 get worse and worse.

“It is complete congestion,” she said. “Everybody says it’s like playing a game of ‘Frogger’.”

Ashley and other neighbors first came to FOX59/CBS4 with their concerns in Nov. of 2021 when a crash at the intersection hurt three teenagers.

Now, almost two years later, the neighborhoods around the area have only gotten more crowded while the intersection stays the same.

“We have so much growth that it’s just nonstop traffic here in the mornings and afternoons,” Ashley said.

The INDOT document outlining the planned stoplight for the CR 800 and SR 13 intersection shows the congestion there was given the second worst grade possible by INDOT in 2020. The document also indicated the conditions would only get worse.

Few people know that congestion better than local bus driver David Goff.

“It’d be like driving downtown Indianapolis with no stoplights,” Goff said.

For the last two years, Goff has watched these neighborhoods grow by the hundreds of houses, all while navigating an even busier intersection.

“Cars are stopped, we got a line down 800 10, 15 cars deep, we got 20 cars deep here and 13 sometimes stopped in the morning,” Goff said.

Goff said all this congestion leads to drivers taking risks to stay moving.

”I’ve seen people jet out in front of a car when they shouldn’t have, I’ve seen people jet out in front of my big bus when they shouldn’t have,” he said.

Relief was supposed to be coming this year. When we talked to INDOT in late 2021, a spokesperson said a stoplight would be added to the intersection in 2023, something Ashley says they need.

”A stoplight just to get people to and from the elementary school safely, I would be tickled to death,” Ashley said.

But, INDOT said unforeseen complications have pushed those construction plans back to the spring of 2024.

”It’s just about widening up the lanes and making sure the utilities are all there and ready to go,” said Kyleigh Cramer with INDOT.

Ashley just hopes this project is a priority for INDOT. 

”We just want to make sure it stays on their radar and it doesn’t get pushed back any further,” she said.

Cramer said the project is expected to begin construction in spring 2024 and cost just more than $2 million.