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State Not Partnering on Safety Improvement

The Door County Board of Supervisors committed $100,000 in August to make safety improvements where Gordon Road/County BB and Highways 42/57 meet, also known as the Culver’s intersection in Sevastopol. The plan is to reconfigure the island at the intersection to prevent motorists from turning left/north onto the highway from Gordon Road. Instead, those motorists would be routed south to the Egg Harbor Road rotary (roundabout) to head back north. 

The supervisors also asked the state by way of a formal resolution to partner on the safety improvement, given that the stretch of road in front of the intersection is scheduled for a mill and overlay in 2023.

In a letter received from Tom Buchholz, northeast region director for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the state thanked the board for the resolution and said it would log the request into the project folder, but the mill and overlay was all that would be done. The state conducted a Safety Screening Analysis that looks at crash patterns, adjacent environment factors, cost and other factors while engineering the mill and overlay project. The analysis recommended no safety improvement to the intersection.

“While this intersection did not meet the criteria for improvements at this time, we will continue to monitor and evaluate this location for safety improvements, either as a standalone project or as part of a larger roadway improvement project,” Buchholz said.

County highway commissioner Thad Ash – who has called the intersection “one of the most dangerous intersections in our county” – said during a previous meeting that regardless of the state’s response, the county intended to proceed with the improvement on its own.

Four accidents have occurred at the intersection this year. There have been a total of 22 accidents and one fatality at the intersection since 2015.