Archived Story
Bridge Avenue talks slated for Thurs.
Published 10:00am Monday, August 27, 2012The Albert Lea City Council and Freeborn County Board of Commissioners are scheduled to come together Thursday to discuss the future of the Bridge Avenue corridor.
The meeting comes after the release of a report last week by Minneapolis-based SRF Consulting Group Inc. The firm studied the north end of Bridge Avenue, from Hammer Road to Interstate 90, looking at traffic patterns and whether there should be any changes to the road, its accesses or signals.
The Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce sent an email to its members Friday advising them of the meeting and encouraging business owners north of Hammer Road to attend.
The discussion is slated to begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Freeborn Room of the Freeborn County Courthouse.
The report was released last week as two businesses have announced plans to build or expand on the north part of the street.
Kwik Trip Inc. has announced plans to build a $5 million development, including a convenience store and diesel and unleaded gasoline.
Hy-Vee Gas officials in the last few weeks announced plans to expand their convenience store, which is about a block away from the Kwik Trip property.
Issues being discussed are whether to allow a right-turn lane off of the street into the proposed Kwik Trip station, whether to re-route Plaza Street on the north end of Hy-Vee Gas and whether to install a traffic light at the intersection of Bridge Avenue and Sykes Street.
SRF Consulting Group was hired for about $17,000 to complete the study.
It would be nice to see some Graphics/Plans of what each of the Parties is proposing and the County/City are Denying?
The short span between all of these accesses on each side and all of the left turn movements makes it a dangerous area. Just too much crap in one small area.
I think I would propose a large radius Round-a-bout at each end of this area and then build a median eliminating ALL LEFT TURNS. This would eliminate all of the weaving combined with all of the left turns and avoid the costly construction and maintenance of traffic signals.
Build a Round-a-bout at each of the I-90 Ramp with the Southside/Eastbound Ramp being a larger version to allow people needing to visit West side business to make a U-Turn there then no-left turns down to Hersey St/Airport Road where another large Round-a-bout should be built.
All driveways, etc. on each side would be Right-in/Right-out accesses making traffic flow much cleaner and cut accidents immensely.
This would take less Right-of-way and less maintenance.
/s/ Carroll
DO NOT BUILD ROUNDABOUTS unless the goal is to keep the mayo system full with new people to care for, most roundabouts here are littered with glass, plastic and some sheetmetal. Most people have NO CLUE how they are to work they just press the gas and hope for the best.
Randy!
I knew at some point we could agree on something!