Florala isn’t the only town on Hwy. 331 that experiences traffic problems during beach season. Luverne also is considering tough decisions for its downtown area, ALDOT Region engineer George Connor said.

“Luverne has similar problem,” he said. “It’s badly congested.

“They have all the beach traffic that doesn’t choose to bypass them,” he said. “What they’ve found is that those folks stop once they get through the congested piece. They don’t stop downtown.”

Connor said Luverne officials are taking the position that, by relieving congestion downtown with additional lanes, they stand to attract some percentage of the traffic. “However small that may be, we don’t know,” Connor said. “But they’re looking at it in a whole different direction.”

Connor said as in Florala, every downtown on-street parking place in Luverne is precious.

“But the proposals we have in front of them, if they want us to do something, we’ll have to repurpose those parallel parking spots on the streets, also. Only there it’s removing the on-street parking to help with congestion.”