Gus Johnson residents zoom through stop-sign approval

Oct. 13—Residents of Gus Johnson Plaza said they couldn't get any momentum a decade ago for their effort to add stop signs to the intersection outside their Mankato apartment building.

Municipal staff seemed unyielding when a fix was requested. A visit to a City Council meeting turned into a dead end. The road just seemed to be closed to making any changes at Fourth and Washington streets.

But for Gus Johnson residents such as Monica Stensby and Georganne Kramer, the worrying never stopped.

Their seven-story home has just over 100 units dedicated to people with disabilities and/or a birth date going back further than 62 years. Stensby and Kramer are mobile, but they were concerned about their neighbors inside their building and out who weren't always adept at dodging speeding vehicles.

The problem grew with changes in traffic controls 13 years ago that left drivers on Washington Street without stop signs as they crossed Fourth and Broad streets.

Stensby remembers trying unsuccessfully to persuade a Gus Johnson resident to watch for cars when crossing Washington after getting off the city bus. Focusing on traffic just wasn't the man's style.

"He focuses on looking (around) and not where traffic is all the time," she said. "I was worried about him."

For Kramer, it was anxiety about not only Gus Johnson residents but also residents of the even larger River Bluff Apartments a block to the east, kids and families living throughout the neighborhood, bikers and skateboarders zipping down the Washington Street hill.

The intersection at Washington and Broad is a neighborhood crossroads to numerous destinations including the playground at Washington Park, nearby churches, the neighborhood convenience store, Joseph's Liquor, and the shops and eating places in Old Town. The 2009 change, which accompanied a switch of Broad from one-way traffic to two-way, added stop signs on Broad but removed them from Washington.

"We didn't like the change right away," Kramer said of the removal of the Washington Street stop signs.

She figures it was about four years ago that she and Richard Reisdorf made a request for a four-way stop at a City Council meeting, but nothing happened.

It remained a topic of discussion at Gus Johnson even as the years flew by. Then came this summer when everything changed with remarkable speed.

"I give the credit to Jenn," Kramer said.

The Gus Johnson residents were thinking of starting a formal petition for a four-way stop and approached Jenn Jones for advice. Jones is the advocacy manager for SMILES Center for Independent Living and helps coordinate Citizens For Accessibility meetings, including one at Gus Johnson.

Jones asked SMILES Community Education Manager Mike Lagerquist to make some inquiries about the petition process. City Clerk Renae Kopischke told Lagerquist that Assistant City Engineer Michael McCarty would be the go-to guy for that information.

McCarty called Lagerquist even before Lagerquist could call McCarty. And McCarty explained there isn't really a petition process for traffic regulation changes. The group could work to get on a City Council agenda, but the issue would just get referred back to the Public Works Department anyway.

McCarty offered a shortcut.

"He agreed to speak to the CFA meeting at Gus Johnson on July 26," Lagerquist said.

The residents made their case that night, and by the time Lagerquist left the meeting, Associate Civil Engineer Jon Nelson was already standing at the intersection, watching traffic and taking notes. A formal traffic count immediately followed with cameras placed at the intersection to allow a tally of walkers, bikers and wheelchair users.

"I don't think they ever looked at the pedestrian traffic (previously)," Jones said. "That's when they saw there was a need."

"It was just a couple of days after (the meeting) when we got notice that the intersection would become a four-way stop," Lagerquist added.

There are good reasons that cities don't routinely put stop signs up to slow down traffic, McCarty said. Studies have shown that excessive numbers of stop signs — particularly when they're not warranted by obvious safety issues — prompt drivers to be less vigilant about actually obeying the signs.

The Gus Johnson case, though, was different.

"We had an extreme amount of pedestrian traffic ... maybe 200 people using that intersection a day," he said.

With the numbers in hand, McCarty steered the request down a couple of bureaucratic pathways — an Aug. 9 meeting of the Traffic Advisory Committee and an Aug. 22 City Council meeting. Almost immediately after council approval, the new stop signs went up, topped by orange flags.

Talking about the process recently, the satisfaction of the Gus Johnson group was apparent on their faces. They loved the help from SMILES, the responsiveness of the city, the sense of empowerment, and — especially — their new four-way stop.

"I feel super more confident and safe at this intersection," Kramer said.