Recent crash reignites concerns over Minnesota Highway 42′s speed limit

EYOTA, Minn. (KTTC) – After Wednesday night’s crash in Olmsted County, the speed limit of Minnesota Highway 42 near Eyota was called into question once again. According to Eyota’s Mayor Tyrel Clark, the road’s speed limit has been a longstanding issue.

Clark and other residents say they believe the speed limit is too high.

“We’ve been concerned about the speed on Highway 42 for a number of years,” Mayor Clark said. “In fact, over the time of our concern, it’s actually gotten faster, went from 55 mph to 60 mph.”

Wednesday night, law enforcement responded to a crash on Highway 42 between a semi-truck and a farm tractor. The semi driver was not injured, but the tractor’s driver, 25-year-old Charles Sachs of Eyota, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.

Clark stated this week’s crash is one of many that have happened on this stretch of Highway 42.

“Mainly it has to do with the speed of vehicles, turning on and off vehicles, and then vehicles stopping along next to railroad tracks,” Clark said. “We have a lot of tanker trucks that stop at the railroad tracks over here, and, really, part of the slowing down of traffic is because of that. There’s a lot of stop vehicles directly on the highway and that has caused fatalities in the past.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), changing the speed limit of a state highway is not a simple process.

“We aren’t able, like in our district, just to arbitrarily change speed limits,” MnDOT Spokesperson Michael Dougherty said. “We need to go through the whole analysis review and then it’s forwarded to our state traffic office that then looks through it and assures it. This is because you want to have predictable speed limits uniform across the state. So, no matter where you travel, you have a good sense of what those speed limits are.”

Dougherty stated a study on Highway 42 is currently in the works. Once it is completed, the results will be shared with the city.

“If it’s going to change, then how soon would the speed limit signs change? How do we make sure that there’s awareness so that drivers that maybe are used to a different speed now understand that’s changed?” Dougherty said. “If it stays the same, there will be information that our traffic engineer will talk about and explain why this was such and this is what the rules that we were following that led us to this determination.”

In the meantime, both Clark and Dougherty encouraged drivers to pay attention to the road and follow the traffic regulations.

“Everybody’s frustrated with how long it takes, but we are anticipating looking at that study, having them release that study, and we do appreciate them working on it.”

The study on Highway 42 is expected to wrap up this fall.

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