With weather getting cold, MN-DOT is wrapping up its 2017 construction season that included over 200 road and bridge projects, plus additional work totaling 1.1 billion dollars. Spokesman Kevin Gutknecht says there was “a lot of work on I-35 up in Pine and Carlton counties and significant work on I-94 from Evansville to Garfield. And then we’re happy to open up Highway 210 in Jay Cooke State Park not too long ago, actually.” Other highlights: a new Highway 53 bridge on the Iron Range, the highest span in the state….a new Highway 43 bridge over the Mississippi River at Winona. Crews are now renovating the historic bridge…and Highway 371 was expanded to four lanes between Nisswa and Jenkins — a high summer travel area.
Gutknecht says among big projects completed in the metro area were the Saint Croix River Crossing and the Highway 169/Nine Mile Creek project. “Saint Croix because it’s been a long time in coming and it’s a big project — probably the biggest we’ve ever worked on,” he says, “and then Highway 169 because we essentially closed down a portion of that road for not quite a year.”
Gutknecht says there’s a lot of pavement work coming up in 2018, not only on segments of I-94 northwest of the Twin Cities, but also sections of Interstate 35: “Pretty much from the Iowa border to Duluth is gonna have different kinds of repaving work done on it,” he says.
More in this interview: