The crowd all started talking at once at the Dec. 3 open house when Jordan Horejsi, Project Manager for the County Road 42 reconstruction project, told them that the average speed along County Road 42 was only a single mile per hour faster than the posted 30 miles per hour speed limit.
Many in the crowd live along Nininger Road and disagreed, having observed cars speeding along the road at all hours at more than double that rate.
“You know they are doing 70 or 80 miles per hour,” said Michael Keim, a resident who lives on Nininger Road.
The crowd of residents arrived at the County Road 42 open house at the Hastings YMCA last Wednesday to see the new design elements for the project, which stretches along County Road 42 from Lock Boulevard to Pine Street with additional bump outs along Second Street at Spring, Eddy and Vermillion streets.
It was an opportunity to speak with city, county and HR Green staff about the project. Residents gathered around tables covered in paper maps of the area which staff stuck sticky notes onto as residents pointed out specific concerns and points of interest. Chief among those concerns was the continued problem of speeding.
“This is a highway,” said Dave Burr, a resident who lives on Grove Street.
Residents spoke of waves of speeding traffic each day, ranging from students driving to and from the high school before and after school, as well as traffic to and from Wisconsin, using Highway 42 as a shortcut to get onto and off Highway 61 and over the bridge.
Traffic out of downtown, especially at night or after events, was cited as especially noisy and troublesome.
The County Road 42 project, set for construction in 2027, is meant to curb those speeding through the area with a number of new design features, as well as making pedestrian crossing safer with bump outs and medians at crossing points.
The project includes narrowing lanes to 10.5 feet, along with raised medians, pedestrian bump outs, and dedicated turn lanes that should be “a new cue for the driver: something’s changing here. It’s more of an urban setting,” and slow them down, said Horejsi.
The smaller lanes, raised medians and pedestrian bump outs work to “squeeze” drivers, naturally slowing them down, said Horejsi.
The new design will remove the bypass lanes at First Street, Madison, and Pleasant in favor of dedicated left-turn lanes. This replacement is yet another design feature meant to slow down cars.
“A lot of times with speed is that people feel they’ve been slowed down and have to make up time. We see that often,” said Horejsi.
Dedicated turn lanes move the cars that are actually turning out of the way of traffic, keeping through traffic from slowing down, and therefore not needing to accelerate after bypass lanes.
Downtown, bump outs along Second Street would reduce the overall distance pedestrians need to walk to cross Second Street, making crossing safter and pedestrians most visible to cars before crossing.
Both Burr and Keim were largely unimpressed with the design, worried that the speeding would continue even with the new design features.
“It’s putting a band aid on that’s not gonna fix anything,” said Burr.
“The only way to stop this is to put a heavy police presence on this,” said Heim.

Timeline
The project is slated for 2027, meant to be completed before the Highway 61 project fully gets underway in 2028.
“This road is going to be just as busy as Fourth Street. We know the traffic is coming,” said Dave Pemble, Hastings City Councilor.
Currently, the final trail and roadway design are still being worked on. HRG staff stuck sticky notes on the maps as residents pointed out specifics about which items they had questions or comments.
No resident assessments will be associated with this project.

Mississippi Greenway
Another aspect of the project is reconstruction on a portion of the Mississippi River Greenway stretching from Highway 42 to downtown Hastings.
That stretch of trail has long been known for its steep hill and sharp turn as it descends towards the Mississippi River embankment near Lock and Dam #2.
The project will smooth out the gradient of that hill and straighten the turn somewhat to protect both cyclists and pedestrians.
For project updates and to provide feedback on the project, visit the project set on the Dakota County website at www.co.dakota.mn.us/Transportation/PlannedConstruction/CR42MississippiRiverGreenway/