Road upgrades lose to 20-year plan

Zellmer: MnDOT plan is too focused on Twin Cities

By Mark Fischenich

NORTH MANKATO — Mankato-area highway improvements — including new interchanges on Highway 14, expansion of that highway to four lanes to New Ulm, a Highway 169 bypass in St. Peter and other Highway 169 upgrades — will all be losers under a 20-year plan state highway officials will unveil next Monday.

North Mankato Mayor Gary Zellmer, who’s president of the Highway 14 Partnership, gave that warning Monday night based on a preview of the report that he heard at a recent meeting of the Highway 14 lobbying organization.

“Outstate, to put it bluntly, is getting screwed,” Zellmer told the City Council at Monday night’s meeting.

Minnesota Department of Transportation spokeswoman Rebecca Arndt said there will be disappointment for those who expect the plan to finance large expansion projects. Despite passage by the Legislature this year of a long-sought funding bill, much of the $6.6 billion in new revenue will be used for bridge improvements and repair of existing highways, Arndt said.

But she said the meeting Monday at the Best Western in North Mankato will give local officials a chance to persuade top MnDOT officials — including Commissioner Tom Sorel — to change the plan.

“Most importantly, it’s not over,” Arndt said of the formulation of the funding plan. “... They’re going to hear it directly from everybody out here.”

Sorel is hearing it already in a highly critical letter from Zellmer, which accuses MnDOT of changing criteria for prioritizing highway projects to meet the spending desires of top department officials.

“This is unacceptable to this partnership and I believe it will be unacceptable to the many citizens of greater Minnesota that are forced to travel on dangerous two-lane roads every day,” Zellmer wrote. “It seems as though MnDOT is formulating performance measures based on where the Central Office would like to allocate funding.”

As an example, he said that MnDOT has changed the way it is going to measure the need for improvements on Highway 169. Previously, the department measured the average traveling speeds on the highway between Mankato and Interstate 494. Under the new performance measures, the funding priority for the southern Minnesota part of Highway 169 will be based on measuring the speed between Jordan and Mankato.

That change seems designed to funnel money to the 169/494 area and away from the less congested southern portion of the highway where average speeds are higher, according to Zellmer. The result, he said, will be to delay — possibly for decades — hoped-for improvements such as the St. Peter bypass and a cloverleaf intersection at Highway 169 and Highway 14.

On Highway 14, improvements being made to the road east of Mankato have boosted speed limits to 65 miles per hour. That increases the average traveling speeds on Highway 14 overall — which will push the entire highway lower on the MnDOT priority list. But the highway is as inadequate and dangerous as ever west of Mankato, Zellmer said.

Unless it changes, the plan will delay state funding for interchanges on Highway 14 at Blue Earth County Road 12 on Mankato’s east side and with Nicollet County Road 41 on North Mankato’s west side. Both are desperately needed for safety and economic development, according to local officials.

“It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole,” said North Mankato Councilwoman Diane Norland of the performance measures.

Zellmer said it’s particularly galling because new information shows that at least half of the gas tax revenue, which is dedicated to highway projects, comes from outstate Minnesota drivers.

“Everything’s ‘the Cities’ now,” Zellmer said of the spending priorities of MnDOT. “The plan’s focused on the Twin Cities.”

Arndt suggested that anyone interested in the issue should attend Monday’s meeting, which starts at 12:30 p.m. But she asked that they listen to the entire presentation, including the way the Legislature focused funding on bridges and preservation of existing roads.

“It’s going to be a lively discussion,” she said. “We really need (attendees) to sit down and listen to the whole picture.”