Options considered for added safety, slow speeds on Lookout Drive

Jun. 26—NORTH MANKATO — For residents and businesses along Lookout Drive in North Mankato, speeding vehicles, noise and worries about safety for pedestrians and bicyclists are a common concern.

Paul Boettcher, co-owner of United Team Elite, which is located on Lookout near the Marie Lane intersection where a traffic signal is located, says the 45 mph speed limit is often ignored.

"People come up Lookout Drive and if the light's green they just fly by."

The city and a partner transportation group are reimagining what the corridor should look like in the future, with the public soon to have a chance to weigh in on potential changes that include reduced driving lanes, bike/pedestrian paths, roundabouts and better landscaping.

North Mankato City Planner Matt Lassonde said redoing the corridor is not currently on any road project schedule, but the city and the Mankato/North Mankato Area Planning Organization want to get public input and narrow down options for when the corridor is rebuilt.

"There've been many pedestrian concerns, safety concerns, speed concerns, noise concerns. The different alternatives target alleviating those conditions, some better than others," Lassonde said.

He said in the end the city will have to look at changes to the road from a cost-benefit analysis and how it would affect different businesses, motorists and residents.

"We want to accommodate everyone fairly and we just want to make it safe."

Last fall initial input was collected from some residents and businesses related to several different options for the corridor. The options were focused on three segments. The south segment runs from lower Lee Boulevard (near City Hall) up the hill to Marie Lane. The middle section goes from Marie Lane to Highway 14. The north section runs from Highway 14 to the north edge of the city limits.

On the south segment one of the two options provided last fall reduced the current four lanes to just one lane up and one lane down the hill, with a wider bike/pedestrian trail on the side. That design got a fairly big thumbs down from the initial group of residents that viewed it.

A better-liked design had two lanes going uphill, one downhill, with a bike/pedestrian path separated from traffic with a barrier.

Currently, joggers and bikers use a shoulder next to the downhill lane, but Lassonde said the city wants to have some kind of barrier between vehicle and pedestrian traffic. What that barrier would look like remains to be seen. Lassonde said a solid concrete barrier would make it difficult to plow snow off the road.

"Being able to plow snow is a big consideration."

In the middle section of Lookout Drive, people most liked a plan that left the current two lanes in each direction, with a grass median between them.

Plans that showed just one lane in each direction, including one that added a center turn lane, didn't garner a lot of support.

Both options would add more grass, shrubs and trees along the roadway.

On the north section, people were generally favorable toward the one alternative given — taking the current two lane road and making it into three lanes, with the middle lane a dedicated turn lane.

While there were a relatively small number of people who responded to the plans last fall, Lassonde said the feedback helps the city and engineers at Bolton & Menk hone in and refine alternatives that will be presented in the next round of public input in August.

He said the city will host an open house in early August, have a pop-up event at the Farmers Market and let people weigh in anytime via the city's website and Facebook pages.

Lassonde said that while they are refining the alternatives, they have not settled on any of the options at this point.

When the city moves forward sometime in the future to reconstruct the corridor, they will seek state and federal funding sources and provide city matching funds.