Hope-Ann Neri said even when she did not see an accident occur at the Gordon Road and Highway 42/57 intersection, she and her staff heard the crashes through their headsets while working the Culver’s drive-through.
The restaurant manager has been there for 15 years, she said. Since the Door County Highway Department made changes to the notoriously dangerous intersection in 2023, she said those crashes have been less frequent.
The county board voted to spend $100,000 for improvements to the intersection in 2022, and approved another $152,000 in 2023. The county’s measures are an attempt to make the intersection safer until the Wisconsin Department of Transportation can implement a permanent fix.
The state plans to build a two-lane roundabout at the intersection, with construction slated to begin by 2028. State and federal funds account for 100 percent of the design costs for the project, including a federal Highway Safety Improvement Program grant for $2 million, according to Mark Kantola, a communications manager with WISDOT. Additional federal funding will cover 80 percent of the total project cost, which is estimated to be between $5 and $6 million, he said, with state funding covering the rest.
Business owners and county officials said the intersection is calmer, and crash data reflects there have been fewer accidents since improvements were made.
Timeline
In 2022, after a particularly bad accident in May, county officials acknowledged a need to do something about the intersection of County Highway BB (Gordon Road) and State Highway 42/57 in the Town of Sevastopol. Between 2014 and 2022, 25 accidents occurred there. Nearly half of them involved cars attempting to turn left onto 42/57 from Gordon Road. Many involved injuries, and one accident caused a fatality.
At the county board meeting in August of 2022, the board approved $100,000 for improvements, while the county highway department worked with the state to get long-term safety changes made.
After some delay and cost increases, another $152,000 was approved in June 2023 for reflective delineators and tape, adding an acceleration lane, paving the shoulder, and improving the culvert under the road.
Meanwhile, the WISDOT evaluated the intersection, performed studies and held public comment sessions and determined a roundabout was the best way to make the intersection permanently safer. The state received a grant in 2023 to help fund that project.
The roundabout design advanced in 2025 and 2026, with construction slated to begin in 2028, according to WISDOT.
With Door County spending $252,000 on interim safety for the intersection, was it worth it?
Did it work?
From 2014 to 2022, 12 of 25 crashes at the intersection were caused by a vehicle attempting to turn left from Gordon Road onto Highway 42/57, colliding with a vehicle heading south on the state highway.
Six other accidents occurred when a vehicle heading north on the state highway attempted to turn left on Gordon Road. 24 people were injured and one was killed at the intersection since 2014.
After the temporary improvements in 2023, there have been three accidents at the intersection. Five people were injured in two of them. Detailed crash reports from the Door County Sheriff’s Office have not been received in time for publication, but two of the accidents occurred in the northbound lane of Highway 42/57, according to WISDOT crash data.
The three accidents at the intersection since improvements were made were “nothing major like what used to be there,” according to Door County Highway Commissioner Thad Ash. “As a whole, driver patterns have changed.”
The temporary fix has seemed to handle most of the severity, he said, and he thinks it was the right decision by the county. Crossing the southbound lane to turn left and go northbound on Highway 42/57 was “one of the most dangerous moves at an intersection we had in Door County,” Ash said.
What neighbors say
Neri is glad the county has done something to improve the intersection.
“It’s better now,” she said.
Jan Zahn, who owns a fireworks store on the northeast corner of the intersection, initially doubted the county’s measures would improve things, but “it’s working really well,” he said.
Zahn has lived in Door County his whole life and has owned the store for decades. He is happy there are fewer accidents at the intersection, he said, but nothing will entirely stop drivers from doing unpredictable things.
He recalled watching a large recreational vehicle heading north on the state highway pull into the center of the highway and park. The driver got out and went to eat at Culver’s, he said. He has also witnessed a handful of vehicles turning left onto Gordon Road, using the delineated right turn lane and going the wrong way against traffic.
Why isn’t the temporary design staying?
The intersection seems to be safer and the delineators are doing their job, according to observers and county officials, and there are fewer crashes occurring, leaving some people wondering, why spend more money on a large construction project?
Ash himself said he has questioned whether there is a less expensive alternative that would also be less invasive to neighboring property, he said, but the state has strict requirements and safety standards and “is pretty set on it being a roundabout.”
According to WISDOT, the delineator posts are “an ongoing maintenance issue” and restricting drivers’ movements will increase travel times.
Since installation, about a dozen of the delineator posts have had to be replaced, according to Ash. A couple were hit by snowplows, he said, but the rest were from vehicles driving over them. The county has also replaced two stop signs swiped by large trucks turning at the intersection in the last three years, he added.
A replacement delineator post costs between $20 and $40, not including labor.
Another option rejected by WISDOT is a more permanent restricted-turn setup.
Three other intersections along State Highway 42/57 in Door County were determined to be dangerous for similar reasons–Highway H, Stone Road and Cloverleaf Road–and were redesigned as Restricted Crossing U-Turn, or RCUTs. This kind of design requires drivers on the side roads to turn right first and then make a U-turn at a designated area instead of crossing or turning left onto the highway.
RCUTs are not typical treatments on a two-lane, undivided roadway, according to Paul Brauer during WISDOT’s public input sessions. Brauer was the department’s project manager for the intersection at the time–he has since retired. The RCUT design is used for higher speed, four lane, divided roadways where there is space in the median to add the U-turn portion, he explained. Also, side road traffic volumes are greater on Gordon Road than they are on the three RCUT intersections in Southern Door.
Additionally, neither the temporary or more permanent restricted turn designs address accidents caused by northbound drivers turning left from the state highway onto Gordon Road, according to Brad Severson, but the roundabout will. Severson is a senior project manager for raSmith’s Transportation Division, working with WISDOT on this project.
Public reaction
WISDOT held a public comment period last summer. People to fill out a form online or attend a virtual public information and response session about the roundabout project.
Becky Halstead thinks the project will make entering and exiting her property more dangerous, she said.
Once a roundabout is constructed, her driveway on will be about 100 feet from where northbound traffic exits. The plans also call for building a median at the north and south end of it.
Instead of crossing two lanes of traffic to turn left out of her driveway, she will have to cross four, Halstead said. The space in the median will only be eight feet long, too small for a standard vehicle to safely wait for the southbound lane to clear.
She expressed her concerns to the state as soon as she heard about the project in 2023, and again during the public comment session. Halstead sent emails to her state and county representatives and everyone else she could think of, she said.
She said she is frustrated by WISDOT’s responses, though District 14 Supervisor Hugh Zettel and Rep. Joel Kitchens both reached out. Zettel also questioned state officials on her behalf.
WISDOT staff told her that the roundabout would slow vehicle speeds to between 25 and 35 mph, making it safer to turn right into her driveway.
After an in-person meeting between Halstead, her county board representative, Hugh Zettel and WISDOT officials at her property in August 2025, she was told to consider building a new driveway, she said.
“I didn’t think I should have to do that.”
Halstead remains concerned about the roundabout’s impacts on vehicles entering and exiting her driveway.
“The roundabout may reduce accidents in the roundabout proper, but they’re going to happen 100 feet north,” she said.
Most public comments during WISDOT’s information session were in support of the roundabout, indicating it was the safest option to address future traffic volumes and eliminate left-turn conflicts.
“The intersection is currently scary and still very dangerous,” one commenter said. (Names and identifying details were redacted in the public record.) “I state this as someone who drives through this intersection twice a day, every day.”
Other commenters preferred the current setup, or making it more permanent with the RCUT option, citing less disruption and lower cost as factors.
One commenter suggested keeping the restricted left-turn setup and also constructing a left-turn only lane on the northbound side of Highway 42/57, improving safety for both left turns, and allowing northbound traffic to “continue at speed straight ahead.”
There is too much traffic volume at the Gordon Road intersection for that type of solution, and a roundabout is expected to “provide better long-term operational capacity” overall, according to WISDOT officials.
The state will also need to acquire some private land for the project, whether through permanent or temporary easements, which also was a cause for some resident concern. The state’s real estate team is currently working with neighboring property owners, according to the department.
Zahn is one of those property owners. “There’s not much you can do,” he said, when asked how he feels about ceding some of his land to the project. As far as the intersection impacting his business, “if people want to buy fireworks, they’ll see ya,” he said.
Zahn also thinks it would be fine if the highway department just kept doing what they are already doing, he said, and he thinks another roundabout might slow traffic down more. That stretch of highway is “already a parking lot” on summer weekends with cars lined up and moving at a crawl, he added.
Door County-specific challenges
Designing infrastructure for a place where traffic volume changes dramatically between January and July is a challenge, Highway Commissioner Ash said.
Engineers just have to design for those peak times, he added, and there is significant strain on infrastructure during busy summer weekends.
Kantola at WISDOT elaborated on the need to design for peak traffic times. “Consideration of seasonal traffic was a significant factor in choosing a two-lane versus a single-lane roundabout. A single-lane roundabout may be able to handle off-season and weekday traffic conditions. However, a single-lane roundabout is expected to have insufficient capacity for summer weekend and holiday peaks, resulting in significant backups and delays,” he wrote in an email.
The department uses traffic forecasts to determine design based on several factors, including nearby land usage, historical growth of the area, state and national trends of similar communities, and seasonal traffic generators, Kantola said.
Ash said the county highway department is looking at other dangerous traffic spots as well. On State Highway 57 and County Highway E, a motorcyclist was killed at the intersection in 2023. The department is working with the state to design a T-stop versus the angled intersection it is now.
They are also working with the Washington Island Ferry Line and the state to make safety improvements at the Northport ferry dock, Ash said, both to prevent vehicles from driving off the pier, and keep pedestrians safer on walking paths where cars wait in line.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the name of Hope-Ann Neri. The story has been corrected.