Hoffman-Victory intersection to be fixed next year if grant awarded

Aug. 18—MANKATO — The crash-prone, sometimes congested intersection of Victory Drive and Hoffman Road could be improved a year sooner than expected if the city of Mankato is successful in a $1 million federal grant application.

Blue Earth County, which owns Victory Drive, is tentatively scheduled to reconstruct that road from Hoffman to Fair Street, including upgrades for the intersections, in 2024. The city, which has jurisdiction over Hoffman, is willing to take on oversight of the Victory-Hoffman intersection improvements if the work can be done next year, funded largely by a federal Highway Safety Improvement Grant.

The county has signed off on the plan because it makes sense to split the construction on the Hoffman and Main Street intersections between different construction seasons to avoid excessive traffic disruption, said County Public Works Director Ryan Thilges.

"That would leave the county with only one major crossing of Victory (to reconstruct in 2024)," Thilges said.

Regardless of the timing, the city would share the cost of the improvements to intersections with city streets. But local city and county taxpayers could benefit if the federal grant ends up financing the entire Victory-Hoffman intersection — roughly 20% of the broader $4.7 million reconstruction project planned by the county for the .7-mile segment of Victory Drive, also known as County Road 82.

The federal funding is aimed at "achieving a significant reduction in fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads," according to MnDOT's guidebook for outstate Minnesota cities and counties. So Mankato will be competing against other safety projects in the region.

Although the grant program sets maximum awards at $500,000 per project per agency, city officials are hoping that $500,000 will be awarded for the city and an equal amount for the county.

"If for some reason the level of funding awarded is not at a level that creates a palatable project for the city, staff will request that the application be withdrawn and funding be allocated to the other ranking projects," staff wrote in a memo to the City Council earlier this month.

Council member Karen Foreman said residents of her ward and others who drive the intersection, which is just west of East High School and also provides access to downtown Mankato via Glenwood Avenue, will be pleased if the project timetable gets moved up.

"This is really one of the worse intersections (in Ward 1), so I'm just thrilled," Foreman said. "... I would have really loved a roundabout, but that's not in the cards."

A detailed intersection control evaluation, known as an ICE study, was conducted in 2018 by the Mankato-North Mankato Area Planning Organization and ultimately concluded that an improved signalized intersection was the best option. The plan calls for adding lanes so that every vehicle movement — right turns, left turns, through traffic — has a dedicated lane in each of the four legs of the intersection.

While the intersection didn't have any fatal or severe-injury crashes during the five-year study period, it had 27 crashes involving less serious injuries and 43 limited to property damage. The 70 crashes were double the statewide average rate for similar intersections.

And the MAPO study projected that traffic volumes would grow by 15-20% from 2018 to 2038. For instance, the daily traffic on that portion of Victory Drive was about 20,000 four years ago. It is expected to reach 23,000 by 2038. On the leg of the intersection heading toward downtown, the jump is predicted to be 20% — from 6,000 to 7,200.

The study found that delays at the intersection are currently not excessive, but they will become so by 2038 during peak traffic times if no changes are made. It concluded that a roundabout, while greatly reducing severe crashes, would not perform as well as the recommended signalized option in controlling delays some drivers would face during the busiest periods of the day.

In addition, the roundabout was estimated to require the most right-of-way acquisition and cost the most — $620,000 in the 2018 estimate compared to $1.36 million for a roundabout.

Along with the additional turn lanes, the proposed project will bring modern signal lights to match others installed at Victory Drive intersections in recent years. Thilges said a series of traffic signals along the corridor makes sense rather than tossing a single roundabout into the mix.

"The signals along Victory Drive are interconnected and timed," he said. "So it works well as a signalized corridor."