By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
In December, the City of Northfield hosted a town hall meeting about the future road construction projects in Northfield for the next several years. City staff led the presentation, including Public Works Director and City Engineer Dave Bennett. While the presentation focused on many of the upcoming projects, Bennett also shared that a focus of the city is building a safe transportation system for everyone.
In the last 10 years in Rice County, there have been 7,813 car accidents, 253 where serious or fatal, and 907 crashes have happened in Northfield, 28 of them serious or fatal. While crashes are all over the city, the most serious crashes in Northfield were primarily caused by Highway 3. Bennett noted that the previous focus on creating safe roads was enforcement, but since the focus has shifted to design:
Maps of Rice County and Northfield showing the number and location of car accidents in the last 10 years. From the City of Northfield Transportation Town Hall on 12/14/2024
“Where you know before under TZD [Toward Zero Deaths], you know enforcement engineering, your emergency vehicle is responding and really everybody is in there working with your schools and I think now with the safe system approach, we know that humams make mistakes. So how do we plan and build a roadway network, understanding that there could be mistakes on the roadway system.” – Northfield Public Works Director/City Engineer Dave Bennett at the 2024 Transportation Town Hall.
Some of the different speed-controlling systems designed for roads include narrowing the road at a pedestrian crossing or raising the pedestrian crossing, improving lighting at crossings, and separating bike lanes from vehicles. Bennett stated that the focus in these designs was slowing vehicles down:
“Again, getting at speed and why it’s important and it gets to really the other users of the roadway. We know when speeds are lower for drivers; if they’re driving 20 mph, they’re they’re yielding for People 75% of the time, so yield rates are high. We know as vehicle speeds increase, get above 30 mph, the yield rates drop significantly down.” – Northfield Public Works Director/City Engineer Dave Bennett at the 2024 Transportation Town Hall.
Chart showing data about the risk to pedestrians from cars traveling at different speeds. From the City of Northfield Transportation Town Hall on 12/14/2024
Bennett noted that installing safer paths for bicycles increases the number of people using the paths. According to city data, the Heritage Drive bike lane had up to 9x times more activity with an off-street bikeway, Roosevelt Drive had up to 4x times more bike activity, and Nevada Street had up to 7x times more biking activity. The city collected the data in October of 2023 before construction was done and after construction was done in October 2024.
Data about the use of bike lanes in Northfield. From the City of Northfield Transportation Town Hall on 12/14/2024
In the future, we will cover the rest of the town hall and the future road construction projects in Northfield.
