The Victoria man sat in a lawn chair in his driveway, counting. WHAP! One. WHAP! Two. An hour later he had a tally of how many times motorists on nearby Hwy. 5 had passed over the rumble strip installed on the center line last year as a tool to enhance highway safety.
Extrapolating, Ron Featherston estimates that he and his neighbors are audibly reminded of Hwy. 5's existence about 240 to 300 times a day. A decibel meter placed in one back yard spiked to twice the level of normal highway noise at times, Featherston said.
The noise produced when a car passes over the strip interrupts nearby residents' sleep, ruins back-yard activities and has "at least one family ... preparing to sell their home because of the never-ending barrage," Featherston said.
The neighbors are now fighting to have the noisemakers removed.
The strips were installed during a 20-mile-long Hwy. 5 resurfacing project. They are part of a mandate to install centerline rumble strips on all rural, undivided 55-mile-per-hour state highways as they are built or worked on. Roads of this type see more than their share of serious cross-the-centerline crashes that result in deaths or serious injuries, a MnDOT memo stated, and the strips are meant to alert motorists who may be straying.
On Hwy. 5 between Chanhassen and Norwood Young America, 20 miles of which were resurfaced last year, there were 1.6 crashes per million vehicle miles traveled between 2001 and 2005, slightly higher than the state average of 1.3 for the same type of road.
Safety was the buzzword in the run-up to the project. MnDOT held meetings with county and city officials and stressed safety goals.
"Our highest priority is public safety," said the mayor of Victoria, Tom O'Connor who, in the position of councilman last year, voted for the rumble strips when MnDOT asked for the council's input. "Considering the safety considerations it seemed like the right decision."