By Nancy Huddleston, Editor

No one said changing the intersection of Highway 13 and County Road 101 was going to be easy.

The preliminary design calls for a partial interchange that includes a bridge for the eastbound traffic, a two-lane bypass for the westbound traffic and a signal for the left turns on and off the intersection. The plan also calls for access modifications -- specifically turning Zinran Avenue into a right turn in and closing access completely at Rhode Island and Louisiana avenues.

Approximately $7.8 million in federal money for a new interchange has been approved by the Metropolitan Council’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB); another $2 million has been allocated from Scott County’s wheelage tax and some $750,000 more will come from the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (MnDOT) safety capacity funds, totaling about $10.6 million. Final design is expected to be firmed up in 2010 and 2011 with funding becoming available to build the project in 2012.

Business owners at the Aug. 13 open house expressed a variety of concerns, according to Nicole Peterson, a south area engineer in MnDOT’s metro district. MnDOT’s main objective in redesigning the intersection is safety, she noted, therefore some local access points will have to be closed off because room is needed for ramps for the partial-interchange design.

“These ramps are similar to a freeway design, so we have to commit the space to maintain that design,” Peterson said.

So, for instance, closing access at Rhode Island and Louisiana avenues is necessary to allow for the ramp and associated retaining walls for eastbound traffic coming off Highway 13 south and onto Highway 13 east.

Peterson said east and west traffic on Highway 13 will not stop anymore at a signal, so having someone pull out onto the highway going 20 mph is a very dangerous situation.

Andy Rice of Boyer Trucks has a front row seat to the morning traffic jams and the crashes at the intersection. He agrees safety is a concern and sees the need for something to change.

He has to get 80 trucks a day into his business, which sits directly on the southwest corner of 13 and 101. So he is encouraged that MnDOT has already listened to business owners who contend the traffic light at 126th Street and Highway 13 needs to remain in order to retain access.

“I’m glad the problems at that intersection are being addressed because it needs to be,” Rice said. “And if not this design, then what? We need 126th open – that’s our biggest concern.”

Savage Public Works Director John Powell has talked with business owners about keeping 126th Street signalized, as MnDOT’s original plans took the signal away from that point and moved it south to 128th Street.

He said the city’s role in the 13/101 intersection improvements is to bring the local perspective to the table and work with the state to identify problems and solutions.

“By working with the business owners in that area we’ve been able to alert MnDOT and Scott County to that issue early on and see that it’s addressed,” he said. “And through some further analysis, MnDOT has decided to leave the signal at 126th.”

Rob Hazelton of Rob’s Auto said he knows designing the 13/101 intersection involves a lot of give and take. But when he saw the first plans with the signal removed at 126th he was very concerned.

“As long as they don’t close us off completely from that intersection, we’ll be OK,” he said, noting his business is located just north of the Highway 13 intersection at 126th Street.

Hazelton is concerned about the other businesses further back on the southwest corner of 101 and 13 as he believes changing Zinran Avenue to a right turn in only will create hardship.

And MnDOT heard about that hardship from business owners at the open house. Mike Kuelbs, Gary Strom and a variety of other property owners in that area have been through this process before in the late 1990s, when MnDOT took away access to CR 101 from Boone Avenue and then did not come through with a signal at Zinran Avenue after the Bloomington Ferry Bridge was finished. After the promised signal was taken away, salt was added to the business owners’ wounds when access to Zinran was adjusted to a three-quarters intersection, which limited left turns onto the highway.

When asked if seeing the 13/101 intersection plans was like a case of déjà vu, Kuelbs nodded his head in agreement and asked a lot of tough questions of MnDOT engineers.

Powell said he sympathizes with Kuelbs’ and Strom’s concerns because of their past dealings with MnDOT when promises were made and not kept. “They’ve been burned in the past and now they are not even sure that the light at 126th will happen,” he said.

But in order for the city to mitigate those concerns, Powell said, the property owners need to stay involved with the intersection design process. To that end, Powell said he’s willing to work as the liaison between the property owners, the county and the state.

But at the same time, Powell matter-of-factly points out that the master plan for Highway 13 shows that local accesses will eventually be taken away. To accommodate that change, the city recently finished off sections of the south side frontage road system, which now allows motorists to drive from downtown west to the Shakopee border without getting on the highway.

“The overall plan for 13 shows access points at 35W, County Road 5, Glenhurst/Chowen, Quentin, Dakota and 169 – that’s it,” Powell said. “As 13 transitions into more of a freeway corridor, we do lose access.”

Peterson said the next step in the process is for MnDOT to go through the concerns raised by business owners at the open house. The Metropolitan Council will be asked to approve the preliminary intersection design in September, she said, which is needed by MnDOT in order to do environmental surveys and further in-depth traffic analysis and studies.

When that is all done, another open house will likely take place, Powell noted, so that business owners can get a look at updated plans.

 Nancy Huddleston can be reached at editor@savagepacer.com. 

 

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