Pennington CSAH 8 New Corridor, River Crossing, Intersections, Urban Roadway, and Pedestrian Facility

Background

The growth of Thief River Falls is expected to increase along the southern boundaries in the coming years with the expansion of businesses and entities like the Sanford Medical Center, the Thief River Falls Airport, Challenger Elementary School, Digi-Key, and Arctic Cat, all of which are critical facilities to the city’s economy.

However, east-to-west connectivity within this area is limited, restricting efficient access to this southerly growth. New and updated corridors for increased traffic types and volumes needed to be evaluated to allow the city to continue to thrive for years to come.

The Project

HEI assisted the Pennington County Highway Department in providing conceptual studies, roadway/bridge design and construction documents, public engagement, environmental permitting, and construction assistance for the new corridor including a new river crossing, roadway, and intersection improvements.

HEI also teamed with a partner to bring our complementary qualifications and experience together to best serve the community. Through this partnership, two build alternatives and a no-build alternative were evaluated and scored. HEI kept in mind the needs for the project, including efficient access for business and residential expansion. Our team recommended a build alternative creating a new river crossing and street corridor allowing for businesses and residential growth for these areas.

HEI and its partners developed a project that included the construction of a new 1-mile street corridor, a new bridge, and two new roundabouts, each at major intersections. Construction was completed and the facilities were fully operational by the fall of 2020.

This project completed the last gap in the TH 59 truck route corridor through the City of Thief River Falls to accommodate truck traffic. The completed corridor provides an alternative route for TH 59 through traffic as well as trucks associated with industries on the west end of the city, such as Digi-Key and Arctic Cat. It also provides significantly improved shipping access from the industrial development to the municipal airport.

Safety was also improved along this corridor with the new roundabouts on major CASH and TH intersections, ADA-compliant pedestrian facilities connecting a multi-use path network, and street lighting throughout. Several elements of the project also included unique aesthetic features.

One of the unique features of this project is that due to the subtle curves of the new approach alignment of CSAH 8, eastbound traffic gets a picturesque view of the architectural features of the new bridge on the west side of the Red Lake River. These features include decorative pilaster monuments at the piers, separate pile-founded pilasters and retaining walls to tie into the wingwalls at the bridge ends, pre-cast concrete caps on all pilasters to accommodate the bridge lighting, and a unique arched ornamental railing

The design and construction of the bridge was completed with a restricted timeline due to flooding in the area. Thanks to the efforts of everyone involved, this project met its major milestones and was substantially completed and open to traffic on time with only minor maintenance and cleanup items taking place after that.

Through this project, the Pennington County Highway Department was able to accommodate industrial truck traffic around downtown Thief River Falls and save residents nearly 3 miles of travel distance to key destinations like the Sanford Health Medical Center and Challenger elementary school.