MnDOT removing road rumble strips on North Shore after complaints

After an outpouring of complaints, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has decided to fill centerline rumble strips on Highway 61 in Lake and Cook counties.
MnDOT officials estimate that a few hundred individual contacts, including a petition with more than 300 signatures, have been made with the agency regarding the rumble strips along that route.
“There have been a few isolated complaints (statewide),” said Beth Petrowske, spokeswoman for MnDOT in Duluth. “The area we’ve received the most complaints about by far is Highway 61 in Cook and Lake counties.”
Rumble strips are a sequence of half-inch-deep gouges that are cut into the road surface. They’re designed to jar inattentive drivers who cross out of the normal driving lane. According to MnDOT, they’ve been effective in reducing the number of crashes on rural two-lane roads by 9 percent.
Over the last decade, these indentations have been made along the center and fog lines on various stretches of Highway 61. But soon after the rumble strips were installed, calls started coming in from people traveling on and living near the road.
“Board members have received numerous complaints from the residents and visitors of Lake County about the sounds generated from vehicles striking rumble strips,” Lake County Board Chairman Rich Sve said in a statement to the Lake County News-Chronicle.
In a news release earlier this month, MnDOT said the housing density along Highway 61 is comparable to a suburban neighborhood, and that the mix of tourist and local traffic causes increased passing - meaning more people are driving over Lake and Cook county centerline rumble strips than those in other parts of the state, and there are more people around to hear the noise.
In addition, some rumble strips on the North Shore are up to an eighth-inch deeper than MnDOT recommends, which may be causing louder-than-expected rumbling. A preliminary noise analysis showed that levels along the highway were higher than those along stretches where MnDOT has performed similar studies.
So MnDOT will be filling in the centerline strips in Lake and most of Cook County in response to noise complaints. The strips along the fog line will remain.
After receiving calls from many angry constituents, county board members welcomed the news.
“The county board is pleased with the decision MnDOT has made related to the removal of the center rumble strips on Highway 61 in Lake County,” Sve told the News-Chronicle. “In meetings with MnDOT, we have discussed public safety as well as noise levels on local properties related to rumble strips and what is in the best interest of our residents. MnDOT has been very receptive to our concerns.”