The state will put another $1.8 million into improvements on Highway 34 between Detroit Lakes and the Four Corners area where it intersects with County Road 29.
Gov. Mark Dayton announced the new spending as part of phase 2 of the Corridors of Commerce initiative, which uses state bonding money to improve important regional arteries that would otherwise have to wait for funding.
“The idea was to show Minnesotans the good that can come of additional funding for transportation,” Dayton said in a phone interview.
“What I learned,” added transportation commissioner Charlie Zelle, “is that because so much is required to manage the system we have, strategic expansion and even maintenance was not in the (state highway plan) in the next five years.”
Highway 34 has already benefitted from an $8.5 million project to build five eastbound passing lanes and four westbound passing lanes between Detroit Lakes and Akeley, said Shiloh Wahl, program development manager at MNDOT in Detroit Lakes.
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“We did the first passing lane section by Otto Zeck Road,” he said, and the project is now focusing on intersection improvements at the Four Corners junction.
At that location, the four-lane divided Highway 34 had high crash rates for its type of intersection, and will be replaced with two through lanes, eastbound and westbound, with a middle center-left turn lane where either can turn left.
The new $1.8 million in funding will go towards a combination of projects, including mill and overlay on Highway 34 from Detroit Lakes to the Four Corners area, not including the areas of new construction completed this year, Wahl said.
Transportation needs to be one of the top priorities for the 2015 legislative session, “certainly if I’m re-elected, and probably even if I’m not,” Dayton said. “For 25 years, this state has been avoiding, with the exception of one increase in the gas tax, the under-investment in our highways, roads and bridges,” he said.
The result has been deteriorating infrastructure, too many fatal accidents, and longer drive times.
“It will just get worse if something isn’t done,” Dayton said. “We’re going to have to set the politics aside and work out a consensus on what we want to accomplish. These are long-term project. Some of these projects won’t be accomplished for nearly a decade,” but will leave the state in a much better position when they’re finished, he said.
