2 miles of Medicine Lake Road to be cut from 4 to 2 lanes

After thinking it over for several years, New Hope's City Council has agreed to lane changes designed to improve safety on a two-mile stretch of Medicine Lake Road.

The re-striping will reduce the four-lane county road to one lane each way, with dedicated left-turn lanes and 7-foot shoulders.

Hennepin County, which proposed the idea, has seen traffic crashes drop 10 percent or more on other roads where the same change was made, said County Engineer Jim Grube.

Some New Hope residents have voiced concerns about traffic backups developing along the stretch, which extends west from Nevada Avenue nearly to Hwy. 169, said New Hope Council Member John Elder, who lives a block from Medicine Lake Road.

Elder said he, too, was skeptical initially, but supported the idea after hearing Grube's comments at a council meeting.

Elder, a former New Hope police officer, said the Medicine Lake Road stretch is "a raceway. I never had to wait long to get speeders." He said the wide shoulders will provide safer walking and biking for students at two schools on Medicine Lake: Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion School in New Hope and Neill Elementary in Crystal.

Grube said he told New Hope, as he has other cities, that if problems arise, the road can be re-striped again to four lanes. "It's only paint," Grube said.

A majority of the New Hope council opposed the idea when Grube proposed it in 2006, said City Manager Kirk McDonald. "They felt two lanes each way was best to keep traffic flowing," he said.

But Golden Valley and Crystal approved the change in 2006 for a nearly mile-long stretch they share along the same road, also called County Road 70. There haven't been any significant problems along that segment, from Nevada Avenue to Douglas Drive, said Golden Valley Mayor Linda Loomis.

Loomis said Golden Valley favors the change in the New Hope stretch, which runs along Golden Valley's northern border. In fact, her City Council approved another 4-to-2 lane re-striping south along Douglas Drive from County 70 to Golden Valley Road that is to be repainted this summer.

"There are less accidents and it's safer for the kids," said New Hope Mayor Kathi Hemken, one of four New Hope council members added since 2006. She has looked at other area lane reductions and said that traffic moves better and slower.

"It also takes the aggressive driver out of it," she added. "The zig-zagging-between-lanes piece is gone."

Although the county has the final say on re-striping county roads, Grube said he tries to get local buy-in. He said the nearly two-mile stretch in New Hope will cost the county almost $5,000 to paint, slightly more than the current four-lane striping, because two shoulder stripes are added.

In 2003 Hennepin County began re-striping roads that have moderate traffic counts, similar to the 10,000 to 12,000 trips per day along Medicine Lake Road, Grube said. The first conversion was about two miles of 50th Street in south Minneapolis from France Avenue to Lyndale Avenue. He said it was a controversial change, but crashes, especially by cars passing in intersections, dropped more than 10 percent.

"Once people get over the shock, I think they will be fine with it," Hemken added. "I'm excited about it happening, especially because the county is paying for it."