EAGLE LAKE — A fast-growing community and a crash-prone highway add up to some costly but necessary safety projects, according to a nearly completed transportation study.
Recommended improvements, including a pair of freeway-style interchanges, would cost an estimated $71 million but are the best options for minimizing crashes and providing efficient traffic flow in and around one of Blue Earth County’s fastest growing areas, the Highway 14 Eagle Lake Corridor Study concluded. The price tag is daunting and the three primary elements of the plan would likely have to be done incrementally over many years.
“This is a challenging issue,” said County Public Works Director Ryan Thilges, noting that the highway and its intersecting roads serve not just Eagle Lake but also a broader regional transportation system and the farms that continue to operate in the area.
“And it’s just a lot of money that we’re talking about.”
It was more than two years ago that the Eagle Lake City Council and Blue Earth County requested that the Mankato-North Mankato Area Planning Organization conduct a $300,000 study of a 5.25-mile segment of Highway 14 from Mankato’s eastern edge to the junction of Highway 60 east of Eagle Lake.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the highway, also supported the corridor study, which was one of the most ambitious the planning organization has undertaken.
MnDOT had been attempting for years to bring down the highway’s inflated crash rates, trying everything from acceleration lanes to J-turns with mixed success. One thing that was predictable was the reaction of many residents of Eagle Lake to those smaller-scale fixes.
The only real solution, they said, is a grade-separated interchange with an overpass and entrance and exit ramps.
The final recommendations unveiled Tuesday at an open house in the Eagle Lake City Hall include interchanges at Highway 14’s junction with Parkway Avenue on the city’s east side and at the intersection with Highway 60 two miles farther to the east.
The third major recommendation is to construct what’s known as a “High-T intersection” at County Road 56, commonly called “the Casey’s corner,” on Eagle Lake’s west side.
That project would involve building a bridge to carry the eastbound lanes of Highway 14 over County Road 56, allowing eastbound traffic to flow freely without any interaction with the county road. Westbound Highway 14 traffic exiting at County Road 56 would also be able to pass under the eastbound highway lanes when heading south into Eagle Lake.
And County Road 56 traffic looking to head west on Highway 14 would pass safely under the eastbound lanes before using an acceleration lane to get up to speed for a merge onto the highway to Mankato.
Dozens of people showed up to see the recommendations and toss out questions and opinions. Bill Mauel’s thoughts were straight-forward.
“Get ‘er done,” said Mauel, a 49-year-resident of Eagle Lake, when asked his overall impression of the plans. “This has been going on the better part of 30 to 40 years. I just about got into an accident getting on the road the other day.”
Mauel’s experience is anything but unique. Along with countless near accidents, there were 171 crashes reported in the 5.25-mile segment from 2019 through 2023, according Bolton & Menk, the engineering firm that MAPO chose to lead the corridor study.
“The study corridor has a crash rate significantly higher than corridors with similar characteristics,” Bolton & Menk found, noting that crashes in the past decade have resulted in five fatalities.
Three intersections — the same ones targeted for the $71 million in improvements — also have crash rates significantly higher than the statewide average.
Without the recommended improvements, crash rates would be expected to ratchet further upward, along with traffic delays during peak driving times, in the next 20 years as Eagle Lake continues to grow at a rapid rate, according to the study. The Minnesota State Demographic Center put Eagle Lake’s population at 3,346 in 2024, an increase of 76% since the 2000 census.
New residential subdivisions are likely to be added south of Highway 14, with commercial and industrial development north of the highway, between now and 2040.
Daily traffic on Highway 14 as it passes through Eagle Lake, currently topping out at 21,600, is projected to jump to 32,700 over that timeframe.
Average traffic on Parkway Avenue, which serves as Eagle Lake’s main street and is also known as “Old Highway 14,” is expected to nearly triple by 2040.
Erin Guentzel, who farms with her family near Eagle Lake, isn’t convinced that the major interchanges being recommended, along with closing township crossings of Highway 14, are necessary or wise.
“I think they’re looking to change these intersections just because people don’t like them, which isn’t necessarily a good reason,” Guentzel said.
Guentzel and her son Cole said safety problems stem primarily from driving behavior rather than inadequate engineering, suggesting improved signage and speed enforcement would be a better strategy than the urbanized construction plans.
“It’s not very rural-friendly, being surrounded by farming and agricultural land,” Guentzel said of the proposed design.
“(Farmers) need safe routes to their land and their homes.”
For Mauel, the need to act is more important than debating the details of the plan.
“Anything’s better than nothing,” Mauel said. “My feeling on it is, every town from New Ulm to Rochester has been addressed — every single one but us.”
Both Guentzel and Mauel support the full interchange recommended for the intersection of Highways 14 and 60.
The Guentzels say it’s a scary location, particularly when drivers are attempting to turn left from eastbound Highway 14 to northbound Highway 60 and must cross the westbound Highway 14 lanes with their 65-plus-mph traffic.
Mauel said Eagle Lake’s growth makes it time to consider construction of an east-west street on the town’s southern side to connect it to an interchange at Highway 60.
The $21 million interchange at Highway 60 is listed in the study as having an uncertain timeline because of yet-to-be-determined future needs and funding.
The interchange at Parkway Avenue, also known as County Road 17 south of Highway 14 and County Road 27 north of the highway, is recommended for the “initial build out” once a source of the $21 million in funding is identified. That project would offer the highest reduction in crashes and would support both the city and county transportation network well without pushing excess traffic onto residential streets.
Because the Parkway interchange would bring the most benefits compared to its cost, it is “likely to score well on competitive funding requests,” according to the plan.
That makes it more likely to be constructed in the near term than the High-T intersection at County Road 56, which carries an estimated price of $28 million.
“The county would love to see both of them in an ideal world where money is no object,” Thilges said.
But the prospect of $71 million being allocated for three intersections in and near a relatively small city is remote, he said.
With that in mind, the High-T project is identified as a “long range vision.”
Thilges is hopeful the Parkway interchange will be a reality in the coming years, however.
And when it is, the corridor study recommends turning the Casey’s Corner into a right-in/right-out intersection, eliminating the particularly dangerous left turns there, until funding is eventually found for construction of the High-T project.