Marathon County XX-X-Pine Kronenwetter Intersection Safety Study Update

Marathon County has completed a preliminary 68 page Safety Study (Intersection Control Evaluation) for the XX-X-Pine Road Intersection in Kronenwetter. The study was presented at the March 13, 2025 meeting of the Marathon County Infrastructure Committee.

The study, which was delivered almost 6 months later than the promised date, finds that the intersection is “operating at an acceptable level of service” and the only immediate recommendation is to try to purchase some additional right of way on the northwest corner of the intersection and clear some brush and trees to provide better vision. There was no motion made to even proceed with this minimal amount of effort.

I would expect that the nearly 200 Kronenwetter residents who signed the petition last year requesting that the intersection be improved were expecting more from the County and from Kronenwetter’s two Marathon County Supervisors who serve on the Board’s Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the County Highway Department.

For reference, Kronenwetter residents and businesses pay property taxes to the County in excess of $3,000,000 per year.

Partial Transcript and Video from 3/13/25 Infrastructure Meeting

Kevin Lang, Marathon County Deputy Highway Commissioner:

… basically what they had found is it’s operating at a at an acceptable level of service. They do have during the afternoon peak hour that East leg for the westbound traffic that comes in there does have probably the highest delay I think it’s about 32 seconds is the average delay so there are some backups and some queuing issues there.

If they would look at doing an all way stop condition on it, it actually raises the delay because now you’re stopping every vehicle that comes into it instead of letting the North South traffic go through.

They also looked at a roundabout for it in like a 20-year life cycle for that that would have the lowest level of delay, so it would be the most efficient and the most safest but it comes at a price tag of probably about 1.2 to $1.5 million versus with an all way stop which I think was like $26,000.

Their recommendation right now though is to take like an incremental approach to this. It operates at a reasonable level of service right now and their first step was to look at there’s a little bit of vision obstruction in the northwest corner of doing some work with getting some right of way and clearing that Vision Corner out and then kind of keep an eye on it and see if we’d want to move it up to an all way stop control in the future or look at that that roundabout option. …

Kevin Lang, Marathon County Deputy Highway Commissioner

Marathon County Supervisor Randy Fifrick

I know this is in Kronenwetter it’s a hot topic for conversation. I’ve utilized it a number of times and level of service at times during peak hours can be a little slow but I think in the bigger picture um we’re very fortunate as a whole within Marathon County and when somebody has to sit at an intersection for 15 seconds to 30 seconds um it can feel like an inconvenience but in the bigger picture of other areas it’s very convenient so I think it’s good. …

It’s important then we continue to monitor this stuff and um I know there’s been a number of accidents there over time and some of those can be high speed …

continue to monitor those things um not looking for any motion on this …