City of Duluth Removing Traffic Signals at St. Marie Street and Carver Avenue
Duluth motorists will notice a change in the future that will impact traffic flow in an area near the University of Minnesota-Duluth. The upcoming change is related to a previous project the City of Duluth had since completed.
This week, the City of Duluth Engineering Department announced that the traffic signals which currently exist at St. Marie Street and Carver Avenue will be removed and the intersection will ultimately be converted to all-way stop signs.
The City notes that the existing traffic signals were originally installed in 2004 as part of a temporary traffic control detour for an Arrowhead Road reconstruction project. However, when Arrowhead Road was re-opened for traffic, the signals remained in place at that intersection.
Then, in 2017, a Signal Justification Report was conducted to consider the removal of the temporary signals. Over the course of a period of time, traffic in the area was monitored to see if the traffic signals were still needed.
Ultimately, findings from this signal justification report concluded that the St. Marie Street and Carver Avenue intersection did not meet traffic signal warrants. It instead determined that the intersection would be better served by an all-way stop sign than a traffic signal.
Therefore, the City will move forward with the report's recommendation in what is expected to be the near future. As of this week, no timeline was provided for when the traffic signal removal will begin and how long they anticipate the entire intersection transformation will take to complete.
For now, Northland motorists need to be aware that the change is coming to the St. Marie Street and Carver Avenue intersection, and there will likely be some traffic impacts throughout the process.