U.S. 53 bypass is booming

Saturday, April 23, 2016
Christena T. O'Brien | Leader-Telegram

Photo by Marisa Wojcik | Leader-Telegram
- The U.S. 53 freeway, which opened almost 10 years ago east of Eau Claire, has drawn more traffic than originally expected.  State Department of Transportation officials attribute that to development that has cropped up along the bypass, particularly that at the River Prairie interchange shown here.

The landscape along the U.S. 53 freeway has changed significantly in the nearly 10 years since the 7.5-mile stretch between Lake Hallie and Eau Claire opened.

"It really looks different now than it first did," said Ross Johnson, an engineer for the state Department of Transportation who worked on the bypass.

Development has sprung up off the interchanges at Highway OO, Melby Street and the North Crossing, but that growth is nothing in comparison to the commercial and residential boom around the River Prairie interchange in Altoona, where a new OakLeaf Surgical Hospital opened in 2014 and Woodman's Market in 2015.

The development, particularly that of the grocery and hospital, has drawn even more motorists to the U.S. 53 bypass, which has seen a continuous increase in traffic since its opening almost a decade ago.

That said, "it's operating as expected from an operational and safety standpoint," said Tom Beekman, DOT regional systems planning chief, of the U.S. 53 freeway.

To make sure that it continues to do so, the DOT has started an operational study of the U.S. 53 corridor between Interstate 94 in Eau Claire County and Business 29 (Highway X) in Chippewa County.

The purposes of the study, according to Brent Pickard, a planner in the DOT's Eau Claire office, are:

• To assess the quality of traffic operations at the exit and entrance ramps on U.S. 53.
• To identify if ramp operations will need upgrades in the next 10 years, and if so, what those might be.

Possible upgrades could be putting in parallel ramp lanes, lengthening acceleration and/​or deceleration lanes and connecting interchanges with auxiliary lanes, said Pickard, who said results of the study should be compiled in late fall.

Traffic volumes along the bypass corridor are high, but they're not to a level high enough yet to trigger adding additional traffic lanes, Beekman said.

Construction on the $121 million U.S. 53 freeway project began in 2002 - several decades after talk of a bypass began. The northern stretch from the North Crossing in Eau Claire north to Highway OO in Lake Hallie opened on June 24, 2005. The southern segment from the North Crossing south to Golf Road opened on Aug. 21, 2006, with an expanded Galloway Street and connection from Birch Street to the River Prairie interchange opening the following month.

"The purpose of the U.S. 53 project, (in part), was to unload a lot of traffic off Hastings Way (the former U.S. 53 in Eau Claire) and reduce the crash rate, and it has done both," Johnson said in an earlier interview.

Beekman agreed. Before the freeway was built, "it was a battle to drive Hastings Way every day," he said, noting the bypass also was built to better facilitate the movement of commerce through this part of the state.

Based on a traffic count in 1993, vehicles using Hastings Way totaled 50,150 per day at the heaviest stretch between Highland Avenue and Birch Street, exceeding the road design capacity by 15,150 vehicles, according to the U.S. 53 freeway's final environmental impact statement.

The average daily traffic on Hastings dropped to 14,500 to 22,500 vehicles per day between Clairemont Avenue and Highway OO, according to DOT figures from 2008, while traffic counts on the freeway ranged from 18,800 on the south end of the project to 32,100 on the north end, with 34,000 to 36,900 vehicles using the segments between U.S. 12 and the North Crossing.

Interestingly, the 1994 EIS projected 2010 traffic volumes at 21,000 vehicles per day on U.S. 53 and 36,000 on Hastings Way.

Traffic forecasting can be like "trying to look into a foggy crystal ball," Beekman said. With U.S. 53, "the big variable in the whole thing was there was a lot of vacant land out there and how was it all going to develop."

Between 1987 and 1992, an average of 350 crashes per year occurred on Hastings Way, or 405 for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to DOT figures. The average annual crash rate on U.S. 53 totaled 79 per year between 2010 and 2014, or 71 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. (The statewide average crash rate for an urban freeway is 72 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.)

When responding to crashes on U.S. 53, Altoona police officers try to get there as quickly as possible, Chief Jesse James said. Because of the volume of traffic, "we always seem to get a second and a third crash" out there.

That said, the bypass "did a good job of pulling traffic off Hastings Way," said James, noting a lot of motorists are local drivers using the freeway to get from one part of the area to another more quickly.

James and Johnson are among them.

"One business decision, like adding a grocery store (near a freeway interchange), can change traffic" in an area, said Beekman, noting the DOT worked with municipalities, like Altoona, ahead of time to try to accommodate future growth. 

For example, the city added turning lanes and traffic signals to River Prairie Drive before Woodman's opened. They also added ramp lanes at the U.S. 53 River Prairie interchange.

"We knew what could happen, so we put plans in place," Beekman said.

Contact: 715-830-5838, christena.obrien@ecpc.com, @CTOBrien on Twitter

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