The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

February 13, 2012

Transportation planners seeking input

By Dan Linehan The Free Press

MANKATO — State transportation planners sought Mankato-area residents’ input Monday on the overall direction of its transportation plans.

There were no nuts or bolts on display at the open house, and no specific priorities or timelines were discussed. Instead, the 50-year vision was more like a plan for how to make later plans.

It is filled with principles, in no particular order, like “leverage public investments to achieve multiple purposes,” “integrate safety” and “strategically fix the system.”

How this relates to specific proposals is an open question.

One of the few dozen participants noted that Gibbon has recently lost its grocery store, and asked how residents could use buses to get to other stores, given that few buses travel between or even within counties.

One of the five guiding “objectives” in the plan (under the “critical connections” objective) includes a passage that references “increasing the connectivity of transit services to allow for easier travel within and between cities and regions.”

This doesn’t mean Gibbon will get a bus to Winthrop, only that such a service would be supported by this plan.

Likewise, the plans discussed Monday make no mention of MnDOT’s plans for funding Highway 14 improvements.

Mike Laven, president of the Mankato City Council and vice president of the Highway 14 Partnership, said a 10-year plan released showed no major funding to expand the highway to four lanes between Mankato and New UlmState planners downplayed this other 10-year plan, which hasn’t been released. They said it’s been put on hold to make way for spending priorities to be outlined in a new plan, based in part on the five objectives and the 50-year vision discussed Monday. This new spending plan would be finished later this year.

Mark Nelson, who directs multimodal planning for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said the 50-year vision doesn’t assume anything about the future. Rather, it lays out priorities that would be relevant whether transportation spending goes up or down.

“We can’t pick a future and start planning for it,” he said.

One of the results of open-ended planning is that some objectives will be vague prescriptions. Take No. 3 (critical connections): “Identify global, national, statewide, regional and local transportation connections essential for Minnesotans’ prosperity and quality of life; invest to maintain and improve those connections; support new connections when practical.”

The plans acknowledge highways have primacy in state transportation, but give much mention to other ways of getting around.

“MnDOT gets it on multimodal,” said Tom Engstrom, a local bicycling and walking advocate. He was there to support those modes, but was confident MnDOT is already moving in that direction.

An official public comment period will likely be in April, with adoption of the plan after that.



On the Web: To see a version of these plans, and to comment on them, visit www.minnesotagoplan.org or look for MinnesotaGo on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

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