Turning left is about to get easier at two Eagan intersections.
The stoplights on Yankee Doodle Road at Blue Cross Road and Coachman Road will sport flashing yellow turn lights this summer to help drivers who would normally be stuck at a red arrow navigate the intersections more quickly.
The new lights will feature four turn arrows stacked on top of one another. The bottom arrow, as usual, glows green and means go. The top arrow, red as usual, means stop.
It's in the middle that things change. The lower yellow arrow will flash, indicating to drivers that they can turn after yielding to traffic. The higher yellow light is solid and indicates, much like a standard yellow light, that drivers should clear the intersection and prepare to stop.
The idea, traffic engineer Kristi Sebastian told the Dakota County Board on Tuesday, is to give drivers more chances to make a turn, instead of just sitting at a red arrow, without jeopardizing safety.
The new turn lights should be up by mid-August.
Eagan residents already received a tutorial on the new lights in the city newsletter, and Sebastian said the county will reach out to employees of Blue Cross Blue Shield, who work near the intersections in question.
Minnesota is among a handful of states trying out the flashing yellow turn lights. The state's first, and until now only, flashing yellow turn light is at Dodd Road and Hwy. 110 in Mendota Heights.
That light has been well received, but it will be taken out soon because it operates a bit differently than those that will be installed on Yankee Doodle Road, said Kevin Schwartz, a signal operations engineer with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
Schwartz and Sebastian said that if the new lights prove useful, more could pop up around the metro area.
Dakota County Board members were initially a bit perplexed about the new lights.
"Any time you complicate things, it has a tendency to confuse traffic," Commissioner Thomas Egan said.
But Sebastian said the lights have been successful in other cities on the West Coast and in Michigan. At intersections where drivers can already turn left on a green signal, she said, drivers find the flashing yellow arrow makes more sense than the regular, round green light.
"Green means go," Sebastian said. "The green ball was not the right message to send."
Katie Humphrey • 952-882-9056
