N Nine Mound Rd realignment

For roughly the past five years, I've been hearing about changing where N Nine Mound Rd meets up with CTH PD. The idea, which made it in to the City of Verona's Comprehensive Plan, has been to realign it to the existing intersection of CTH PD and Woods Rd. Two reasonable goals would be met with this realignment:

1) Reduce the number of access points along CTH PD. Two three-way intersections would be reduced to one four-way intersection. This is both a safety and traffic flow improvement for CTH PD.

2) Allow for the extraction of the highly useful stone resources that are under the current N Nine Mound Rd right-of-way. Notice the rock quarries on both sides of the existing road. Local extraction of this resource helps to keep costs down and provides local jobs, as opposed to extracting it elsewhere and trucking it in.

Verona's Planning Director recently shared information that the Dane County Highway Department considers the Woods Rd intersection to be unsuitable for additional capacity. I'm told that they are concerned about the curved and inclined nature of that area reducing visibility to an unacceptable level.

Giving up on this plan would likely result in development in conflict with the proposed N Nine Mound Rd realignment, and then it would be off the table forever. I'm not ready for that step yet. I drive the Woods Rd intersection on a regular basis and I theorize that some relatively simple elevation and alignment changes could provide significant improvement.

Development of both Madison and Verona will eventually reach this area and continue heading west. If nothing else, that development alone will require improvements to the intersection to accommodate increased traffic on both CTH PD and Woods Rd, possibly including expansion of PD to four lanes. This would need to happen regardless of whether N Nine Mound Rd goes there or not.

I would like to see a comprehensive look at what it would take to improve the CTH PD and Woods Rd intersection to a point where converting it to a four-way would be acceptable.