The Brookings City Council plan to improve pedestrian safety along Medary Avenue by including a roundabout at the south end of the campus.
The Brookings City Council signed and submitted a $3,810,000 Transportation Alternative Grant Program Application in September. This money would help pay for construction for a shared-use path and trail, traffic calming, and pedestrian crossing improvements on Medary Avenue.
Under the proposal, the project would be completed in 2025.
A section of Medary Avenue that connects Eighth St. and North Campus Drive has 14 crosswalks and can be challenging for pedestrians to cross. With multiple mid-block crosswalks, students often cross without looking for motor vehicles. The road has a speed zone posted at 25 mph, yet motorists exceed this at times, particularly when traveling south. This creates a pedestrian safety issue.
The Transportation Alternative Grant Program (TAP) is a state grant initiative managed by the South Dakota Department of Transportation. TAP provides grants to communities to support the construction of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.
This grant would improve the Medary Avenue section by constructing a shared-use path, 8 feet wide along the east side of the street, narrowing Medary Avenue from 36 feet wide to 27 feet wide, adding enhanced lighting near crosswalks, and the roundabout at the intersection of Eighth St. and Medary Avenue.
Charles Richter, Brookings city engineer, developed and designed the idea for the pedestrian improvements.
“Roundabouts can typically handle quite a bit of traffic,” Richter said. “But this project is to help with pedestrian safety. Narrowing the road and adding the roundabout would provide traffic calming and help reduce speeds.”
Truck movement is the biggest concern Richter has for the roundabout. But he thinks they have minimized and will advise truck drivers to use other roads to drive around Brookings and SDSU.
Council member and SDSU alumni Andrew Rasmussen likes the pedestrian improvements this grant will provide.
“We are looking at both traffic and pedestrian safety,” Rasmussen said. “This is a great step forward to address Medary’s concerns. I think they (roundabouts) are fun. They do take a little bit of getting used to, but Brookings already has a few, so I think this one will blow over very well.”
The roundabout on campus intersecting University Boulevard and Jackrabbit Avenue near Frost Arena is a three-way roundabout, while the sketch graphic for the intersection of Medary Avenue and Eighth St. is a four-way roundabout.
But Rasmussen said that people should go and practice driving around the roundabouts to become more comfortable.
David Law, SDSU director of Project Management & Engineering, said the university and Brookings have some utility infrastructure that has to be replaced along Medary and has to be done in the next two to five years. Those got plans rolling with the Brookings city engineer.
“It got all of us talking about how to strategize what could be done to make it more pedestrian friendly,” Law said.
He says that the university fully supports this grant and its future plans. But one concern SDSU had for the construction was the Hobo Day parade.
“The university has expressed the desire to maintain that tradition (one day event) and the ability to maintain the parade,” Law said. “So, anything we do on that road will accommodate the parade and the floats. When we do these projects, we typically don’t extend them into the school year at all. We might have to phase them into three summers to get this all done and have them open in some capacity levels when school starts.”
Brookings and SDSU will find out if the grant is approved next spring. If approved, the pedestrian improvement construction will coincide with the SDSU’s sewer construction scheduled in 2025. This will minimize road closures and maximize construction cost efficiencies.
For more information or addressing concerns, please contact Charles Richter, Brookings City engineer, [email protected].
