[Music] Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis- St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org Welcome to Lakeland Currents.

I'm your host, Todd Haugen.

With us today is Matt Upgren, from the Minnesota Department of Transportation, who is also a project manager with MnDOT, Matt, welcome to Lakeland Currents.

Thanks for having me.

Matt, what's a project manager do?

Well.

We do a lot.

Project managers in general are taking a project from conception to finish and ultimately seeing it through the completion of a project.

Now here at MnDOT, where I work, in Bemidji, we're really taking it from that design concept stage all the way through the actual design and development of a plan set.

And then we pass the torch and sort of hand it off to our construction group which takes it from there and they see the project through construction.

How are these projects decided upon in terms of when you do them?

Well, really, what drives which projects happen when is pavement life cycle.

So, here in District 2, we're responsible for the northern or northwest portion of the state of Minnesota.

So these are all our roads that we're responsible for.

All of the roads in our district have a certain expiration date on them.

Essentially.

The pavement starts to fall apart, things like that.

So, as that pavement life cycle, as we run through, over the course of that pavement life cycle, they come up in the queue one by one and that's essentially what sets our program and how we pick at a high level which project happens when.

Now there's little nuances to that and we may move a project up or back by a year, you know give or take, but ultimately that's what sets our program and which projects come and which priority.

The project's impact on the public is kind of multiphase isn't it?

Because obviously, while the project is happening, that has a huge impact.

But in advance, during the planning stage, like we're in right now for a few big area projects that are coming.

This is a pretty big impact time for the public as well, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Yeah, you know as we go forward as an agency, as a district, we're trying to include the public more in some of the decisions that are made and the way we tailor a project and we're doing that now on a number of projects, which we'll talk about.

But just as a general principle there's more tools in the tool bag, too in a way, that we have to try to improve just the quality of life on our multimodal transportation system.

Here in Bemidji we're well aware of the coming project in a few years on 197, our main road through Bemidji.

Yep.

But in Walker, currently, there's a big project contemplated for 371 as it travels through Walker right?

That's right.

Yeah this is a large project by our district standards and, you know, certainly for the community of Walker.

Right now we're aiming for a 2029 to 2030 time frame, on an actual construction project where there's shovels in the ground and we're moving dirt in Walker.

You know it's so far out we don't have the year dialed in exactly, but it'll be right there somewhere.

Where we're at today though is we need to establish the vision for that corridor first.

We phrase it that way intentionally.

So, what does that mean?

It really is rolling up our sleeves and digging in with the community members on understanding what's important to the community, what their priorities are.

And then what are we seeing just from a traffic safety standpoint, operational standpoint.

Is the road working?

Is it functioning the way it's intended?

You know are pedestrians able to move across the road, are vehicles getting through them the way they should?

So these are the things we need to look at now.

And there's a number of ways, different directions we could go in Walker.

So, how do we pick just one right?

So we've actually developed a community review panel.

And we've set in motion a corridor study that will run the course of a year here.

We've already started it and we're in the middle of it now.

That will run through the end of this coming summer, towards the end of summer of 2024 we'll try to be wrapped up.

But that community review panel is a really important component.

They're providing us with some of the key priorities in the community of Walker and then we're combining that with some of the traffic data that we're seeing.

There's an unsafe stretch of road south of Walker.

There's been a lot of crashes down there, we're trying to fix that.

So how do we address that?

You know is it looking at the type of crashes we're seeing?

Lane departure, head-on type, these are significant data points that we need to resolve and solve with this project.

So that's what we're working on right now with this corridor study to try to establish that vision.

And then once we have that vision for the corridor from there we launch into a final design project.

Well lots more about what might be happening in Walker itself in just a moment, but south of Walker, is that area of 371 going to become a four lane from Walker southward?

Not anytime soon anyways, the traffic volumes just don't justify it right now.

That is something that has been brought up in the past, but that's not something that we see in the near term anyways, at least immediately up to Walker.

Some in state government kind of had that as a stated goal didn't they at least at times?

Yeah, that idea has been out there for a little while but it just doesn't fit the goals of the department right now.

Okay.

So in Walker itself there have been ideas bounced around in the past, some have been set aside because they just didn't seem like they were going to work, but currently 371 as it goes through Walker, it's a very heavy business area of the city, that it would seem like your options might be a little bit limited because you've got these businesses on each side of the street to work around.

Right, there's only so much we can do, right, we're not moving the buildings.

So we have our sandbox that we get to play in, it's sort of set right.

You know Walker's unique in the sense that it really has a lot of, it has a large differential in the amount of traffic it sees throughout the year.

We see anywhere from 4,000 cars a day to up to 12,000 in the peak times in the summer.

That's really a wide range of different traffic volumes so how do we design a road for that?

The other component is the large pedestrian traffic we see in Walker, a really vibrant downtown scene.

So how do we combine that into this vision for the corridor?

As a general principle, as you try to make a corridor more pedestrian friendly, it tends to take away from how fast freight and motorists can get through the town.

So these things are almost kind of fighting each other right and it's not unique to Walker.

That concept plays out elsewhere.

So, trying to strike a balance there between, you know, user access and then but also getting, you know, we have a lot of freight that goes through that corridor and commercial interest.

So trying to find a balance there is important.

Right now, in the corridor study where we're at is developing alternatives, and so this is a fun part of the corridor study, where we get to look at those community priorities and start to come up with ideas and, you know, is it bumping out the curb lines for some traffic calming benefit and also get pedestrians seen better by motorists?

Right now with parking on either side of the road it could be difficult to see pedestrians waiting to cross the road.

So there's all these different strategies we could use.

Is it a mini roundabout, is it just a good old fashioned traffic signal?

The idea of a one-way was even floated out there.

And you know a lot of these ideas will be retired and they're not right for Walker, but these are the kinds of things we're going through to try to determine what's going to work in town and what won't.

And you have these discussions and you do a corridor study because the decision isn't made yet.

You know, I would imagine some people are skeptical about well, you're just coming in and telling us we have input, but you already know what you want to do but you don't, do you.

Well, right, we don't.

That's why we're doing this.

There's a number of communities, just to prove that point: we've worked in Fosston, in Crookston, in Bemidji.

The amount of give and take on both sides is there, ask anyone in those communities and they'll tell you, yeah, MnDOT did not get everything they wanted.

Now we still need to make sure it's a functional roadway, right, it's still got to make sense from an operational standpoint, but absolutely there's give and take and that's why we're doing this corridor study.

In Bemidji, in a portion of 197, there's an area where 20 years ago or so the corridor was revised and made a one-way and kind of separated into two different roadways in front of and at what it was at that time behind some businesses.

Would that work in Walker?

From a traffic flow standpoint absolutely it would work.

Would it make sense from a community standpoint?

You know we have residential areas and if we move traffic over one block you got to put yourself in the shoes of you know people have homes along there.

Do they want all that trunk highway traffic?

When they bought their place they probably weren't expecting it.

Businesses, as you mentioned, they're all facing one-way essentially, you know, do they now want half the traffic over here on this street?

So, I think from a community standpoint it probably is going to have, there's going to be a lot more resistance there to that and it was just an idea floated out, right?

But, you know, if we can separate traffic, you can get it to move better just with the lower volumes.

It gives you more room to work with in terms of sidewalk space, things like that.

But, yeah, so those are some of the the things we've been analyzing.

And it would seem as the roadway goes through downtown Walker right now, there's no room there anywhere that I can think of for roundabouts, I would assume.

For traditional roundabouts, no, with the raised dome similar to what folks are familiar with like at Anne Street and 71 for example, those would not fit there.

There is a type of roundabout, however, that we call a mini roundabout that do fit into typical existing city block intersections.

It doesn't have that large mound of dirt in it that folks are used to seeing, it's more of a mountable lower profile center circle.

They do operate well, they move traffic very efficiently, but they are a newer concept.

In the state of Minnesota there are a number of them.

In fact MnDOT did a mini roundabout project in St James.

If anyone's curious you could just zoom in on Google Earth and look in St James, Minnesota, there's some mini roundabouts there, so that would be one option.

But with the heavy pedestrian traffic, we need to analyze that first, if that would make sense from a pedestrian in combination standpoint.

And a center, would a center median in the roadway in downtown Walker, serve any useful purpose?

Perhaps.

It's just so tight in that downtown space that it's probably not going to get a lot of traction.

Some communities have done that before where there is a narrow raised median just to help delineate things.

Typically when we put in something like that it would be to prevent folks from trying to cross and park on the opposite side of the street if we only want folks backing in only, for example.

But that is an option that's been considered.

And there's, of course, parking on both sides of the street and I would assume that'll have to stay.

That's very important in Walker, that was one of the higher ranking priorities that the community gave us was maintaining that parking that they have.

So there's push in the community to try to find additional parking even, perhaps a surface lot somewhere that the city could try to expand or create that could help just with parking in general in Walker.

But the parking right now that's there, the community absolutely wants to keep and we intend to do that and to work with them on that.

It was interesting, so we've had a number of engagement events now in Walker.

We've had a public open house, we've met with this specific community review panel group a handful of times, and then we have our website, our public website, that folks can go to for input, for weighing in on these things.

In each of these areas we polled folks on what are your number one priorities in Walker that you want to see in this project.

In the public open house, so that's the general public in Walker who weighed in on this, the community review panel who is that specific group of people, kind of that cross-section of the community, and on the public survey online, in all three of those formats where we polled people all of them said traffic flow was the most important priority, which is striking, not unexpected but just very uniform across all the formats.

Parking was number two priority, so it ranks right up there and of course making sure the pedestrians can still get from point A to point B across the road, very, very important to the lifeblood of the business community down there, really in the summer, and that's a very important important component in this discussion.

Correct me if I'm wrong but one of the biggest interrupters for traffic flow is the signal light, isn't it?

Yeah it absolutely is.

That brings us back to this conversation about trying to move people through Walker in an efficient manner and yet trying to make it easy enough for pedestrians to cross.

Signals are not traffic safety devices.

They feel like they are, but we don't consider them that way because if you look at the data, you know, unfortunately there are a lot of injuries and worse that happen at signals, if somebody misses it, for example.

But they are still a very viable tool, obviously, they're all over the state, but in Walker that's something we're analyzing right now is how would that corridor function, given the traffic volumes we know we have, with signals.

Now what if we switched it to mini roundabouts or what if we basically just put it back as is.

Those are three things we want to compare and how does that traffic move through the corridor.

Roundabouts do move the needle on traffic flow, they improve that traffic flow, it's not a hard stop like at a red light where traffic backs up it's more of a rolling stop and it just keeps people moving and it moves them more efficiently through an intersection when they can find and select those gaps when they're yielding they can find that gap and just jump into traffic.

I think there are only two signal lights that I can think of in the area in Walker.

Yeah two downtown there.

Right, right.

That would seem to be something to look at.

Yeah and that's what we're doing right now, that's the stage right now.

So which one's going to operate the best?

I can't tell you that right now, that'll be coming up here but.

So there's another public meeting in April?

That's what we're shooting for, yeah no dates yet, but at the time we're filming this and when it airs if anything has changed you can always check our website.

I do encourage folks, if they're interested in this Walker study to just Google search MnDOT Walker Corridor Study, it'll be the top link there.

So rather than trying to remember a URL or something, just Google it and it'll come right up.

This is the time to let your ideas be heard.

Although, as you mentioned at the outset of this part of the discussion, any potential project is several years away still.

That's right.

Now's the time to make your voice heard, let your ideas be heard.

We're working with a specific downtown business group, with the Chamber of Commerce as well, so I encourage folks to talk to your neighbors, talk to other people, and get in touch with myself or part of the project team.

All our contact is on the the website online and there's more coming here.

Again that public open house we're shooting for, we're having another specific business group meeting and a couple more CRP meetings coming this summer.

But the heavier construction is going to be happening in Bemidji in in the nearer future, right, especially beginning in the summer of 2025.

That's right.

That's not MnDOT work.

Yep so just to be clear, the city of Bemidji is going to be completing their road project in 2025, summer '25.

That's going to be on Middle School Drive and Hannah Avenue, just south of 197, down towards the sports complex towards the middle school there.

That's going to be happening in 2025.

Now the following summer, 2026, we'll be coming in, MnDOT, on our highway and reconstructing our roadway from about the airport running east down to Hannah Avenue there, down by Simonson's gas station.

We'll terminate it down there.

That's the size of a project that we feel a contractor could get done in one season and that will include those three roundabouts.

And then the remainder of 197, over to the area for instance of Bemidji State University or so, that would be the following summer.

That will be a few years down the road.

Few years down the road.

Originally we had intended to just give the town a break from road construction after the West End 197 Project is done.

You know we all live here and bring kids to school and things like that and we understand the headaches that come with road construction.

So originally we thought it would be done in say that 2028 time frame.

Now the pavement has fallen apart so, so fast, faster than we were thinking it would, to where this past summer we actually did just a real thin mill and overlay.

Well that bought us some time on that east portion that you're talking about from say Simonson's gas station down to the college, bought us a little time by doing that.

So, just to maximize those dollars spent, it'll probably be closer to the year 2030 or somewhere around there.

Don't hold us to that but something like that, a few years down the road.

Right.

So back to 197's construction in 2026, the roundabouts would be at which locations?

In front of Menards entrance, then at Middle School Drive, so that's the Walmart entrance, and then at Simonson's gas station at Hannah Avenue, those are going to be the three new roundabout locations.

Down by Menards we're going to take Gillette Ave and move that over and square it up with the Menards entrance.

Yeah, so there's some improvements there.

That's a tricky one right now.

It is.

You know it can be tough.

I love shopping at Fleet and all the businesses in town here.

It can be tough to turn left out of there, you know, in busy, kind of peak hour time frames.

Highway 71 intersection, that's going to stay a signal.

The reason for that is it's just the amount of traffic coming into that intersection north, south and east, west is larger than the others.

Such that it would necessitate a full two-lane roundabout and those just get really large and just didn't fit the context of our corridor and what we wanted to do on 197 and some of that give and take honestly during the corridor study here.

So that's going to remain a signal.

And, you know, those other two roundabouts that I talked about at Walmart and Simonson's, those are the only roundabouts going in on our corridor.

For the East End Project, down to the college, that'll largely be going back in as is when we reconstruct it.

Traffic counts though at the Middle School Road and 197 intersection right there by Culver's there at Walmart, those traffic counts have got to be pretty high, too.

They are, especially when school lets out.

That's not a low volume intersection by any means.

We feel that the roundabout that we are going to be designing will definitely be adequate.

We know that.

It'll be a what we call a 2 by 1.

There will be two lanes on the trunk highway side of the roundabout and one lane on the minor road side, as it's called.

It'll still look and feel like a roundabout, it'll just be more close to the roundabout that would be by the high school entrance, for example, where you have multiple lanes on one side and only one on another.

Sure.

Well it would be interesting to watch the development of the design at something like that because it seems like it would be complicated.

It's complicated, yeah.

You'd be amazed by the amount of effort and the size of the plans that we'll have at the end of this will be enormous.

And you got to tip your hat, honestly, to these contractors too, who build it.

It's not an easy job building these things, but it'll be an all concrete road, which is nice to work with.

And concrete, does that have a longer wear time?

Yeah it has a longer lifespan for sure.

Right.

This is the project that, this 197 project we're talking about, we submitted a RAISE grant application.

That's just an acronym for a federal grant program.

We submitted that with the city of Bemidji and we're able to haul in $18 million in federal discretionary spending dollars at the federal level to Bemidji, Minnesota here, which is really cool.

That's above and beyond the city's budget and above and beyond our typical road budget and so part of that is going to the city of Bemidji project that we talked about in 2025.

The larger portion is going to MnDOT so we're able to do it right and build the road here that's going to last a long time.

The nice thing is once these projects are done, we won't have to come back through for a long time and disrupt the businesses.

The roadway itself in that area will still have the little dipped median in the center between the two lanes, directional lanes.

That'll probably be a raised curb median, you know, just the way these roundabouts lay in, you know, the way the curvature comes into them, the splitter islands as we call them, to get traffic separated.

It'll probably make sense to fill that median in.

We'll be adding some storms to our infrastructure but the nice thing about where we're at in Bemidji here there's a lot of great sand that we have, and we can infiltrate that water, that additional if it's impervious or additional storm water, we can infiltrate that right into the ground pretty easily here.

So nice that MnDOT has a a headquarters right here, as well.

Yeah it's great.

So on to the project coming, you were telling me about before we started the our show today, in Leonard.

What's happening there?

Yeah I'll give you the quick rundown here.

We just wrapped up a plan set that will include a mill and overlay in the town Leonard.

It'll basically run from town out west on 223 out to 92 running north-south, mill and overlay.

We're going to replace some culverts along the way, but then right in the town of Leonard we're going to be replacing sidewalks, adding some new sidewalks, so that'll be nice kind of along the park in there, and then we're also adding some lighting in town.

We're going to add a couple of street lights with our project and then the city was even talking about potentially adding some more lighting beyond that.

So there's a few lights there now on wooden poles.

These will just be upgraded and modernized.

And that's in the summer of 2024?

Correct.

That'll be coming this summer.

Okay is that a state highway?

Yep that is - 223 is a state highway.

It's kind of floating on its own out there in the middle of nowhere, but it connects to 92 and you can look for that project this summer.

Matt, we only have about a minute left of our show today.

Is there anything you want to summarize with or anything we missed that you wanted to bring up?

Yeah, just to jump back to the Walker corridor study one last time.

As you mentioned, now is the time to make your voice heard.

If you're in that area watching this, we want to hear from you guys.

We have a number of activities coming up yet so by all means reach out to us and look for information upcoming on a public open house, future CRP meetings and business owner meetings and then just general council meeting updates.

If you ever want to sit in on some of those and join the conversation, we want to hear from folks.

Well, Matt, it's very interesting to chat with you about these projects.

I hope that next year, seems like you always have something going on.

Oh yeah, every year.

So hopefully next year you can come back and visit with us again on Lakeland Currents.

Absolutely, I'll do that.

Matt Upgren, with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

He's a project manager.

I'm Todd Haugen.

We thank you for watching this edition of Lakeland Currents and thank you for your support of Lakeland PBS.