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Driving around Austin recently, you might have noticed stop signs with orange flags, alerting drives to new stop signs at several intersections within the community.

The Austin City Council approved the addition of several stop signs in October at a number of four-way and T-intersections within the community to meet concerns that were coming in from the public regarding uncontrolled intersections.

“I think that driving patterns of the public are changing,” said City Engineer Steven Lang. “Some of those long time institutional things like yielding right at uncontrolled instructions; some of those driving patterns we’re losing in society. Creating controlled intersections gives a clear understanding of where that responsibility lies from a driving standpoint.”

Around 80 new stop signs will be added by the time the project is complete at a total cost of $15,000 to purchase signs and posts.

Signs are gradually being put up, but the process will also largely depend on how good the winter is regarding the amount of snowfall.

“It’s a good winter type job for our crews,” Lang said, explaining that the less snowfall means a faster progression of work. “The duration of the project really depends on what our winters are like for the next couple years.”

A number of factors drove the project forward. Alongside the public concerns regarding uncontrolled intersections is the bridge construction project by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. 

Most recently, work began on the bridge over Interstate 90 at Fourth Street NW that is driving increasing amounts of detour traffic to 14th Street NW and in turn more traffic to side streets as people maneuver through town.

With more people unfamiliar with those roads, Lang said the signs will help better define the intersections.

There’s also a practical component to the project as it’s walking in line with an effort to replace street signs throughout Austin, a project that will cost $50,000 to complete.

“There’s a statewide standard for street signs: names, sign size, lettering font, all of those things,” Lang said. “Ours are older. They don’t meet the state requirements. Our street name signs are going to be larger, text is going to be larger, but all of the naming is going to stay the same.”

The project to replace all of those signs is expected to take around four years, with more time allotted as necessary. By doing it at the same time, city workers can use the same post for both the stop signs and the street signs.

At this point, the city is replacing the stop signs first with the street sign replacement coming after.

Detour status

Throughout the process, which includes the increased traffic on 14th Street NW and in residential areas, Lang and the city have begun to get a better look at how everything is flowing, which has generally worked pretty well but that has also created areas to keep an eye on.

He indicated that the I-90 off ramp to 14th street, as well as the on-ramp has created long lines of waiting vehicles and that MnDOT had placed a camera there to monitor the situation.

“They are looking at what can be done to make improvements yet,” Lang said.

He said there have also been reports of long lines of vehicles at the 14th Street and 18th Avenue NW intersection.

“That was a bit of a surprise there,” Lang said. “Eighteenth Avenue is built up for large volumes of traffic. It wasn’t built for this volume of traffic.

Still, considering the expected doubling of traffic on 14th Avenue, Lang said that so far things have been smooth.

“We’ve heard some concerns about no left turn arrows at these temporary signals, which we knew going into that okay, that is a downfall,” Lang said. “We anticipated the overall improvement of the signals would outweigh not having left turn arrows and I think it has.”

“Overall, I’m happy with the temporary signals and how 14th Street is working,” Lang said.