Rural Minnesota Freight Highway to Get $10 Million Face-Lift
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A 90-year-old undivided two-lane freight corridor is getting a $10 million face-lift in a Minnesota agricultural belt where truckers, commuters and farmers cope with high crash rates and congestion.
Carver County is receiving a U.S. Department of Transportation grant to improve freight mobility and safety along U.S. Route 212 that will reconfigure intersections in areas with high crash rates and enable truckers to carry goods more efficiently.
A vital route between rural southwest Minnesota and the Twin Cities, U.S. 212 spans 161 miles in Minnesota and has been designated a critical rural freight corridor by the state department of transportation. It provides a major freight connection for 22,000 square miles of rural Minnesota and South Dakota.
Gayle Degler, commissioner of Carver County, told Transport Topics the grant will help the county (35 miles southwest of Minneapolis) complete the last five-mile section of U.S. 212 within about two years.
Funding will go toward right-of-way acquisitions, soil corrections and preserving some historic landmarks. The roadway was part of the transcontinental Yellowstone Trail established in the heyday of the Model T.
The $10 million grant will help complete the U.S. 212 project that will total nearly $77 million, said Sara Renney, communications manager at Carver County Public Works.
According to a 2019 freight mobility and safety project report by Carver County, freight bottlenecks along U.S. 212 negatively impacted 65 freight generators and resulted in a 17% increase in operational costs. At the same time, 72% of county residents who commute are stuck in traffic congestion.
Degler
Carver County officials determined that the average trip length is 61 miles for personal users and 91 miles for freight traffic.
Not only supporting interstate freight traffic, U.S. 212 is important for intrastate truck shipments with Carver County and seven other counties each accounting for 5% of freight traffic on the corridor.
The federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant awarded Sept. 15 will remediate current safety issues arising from narrow lanes and shoulders, limited turn lanes, conflicts with rural farm equipment, problem intersections and traffic issues involving drivers having to merge from a four-lane divided highway into a two-lane undivided one.
The DOT noted that in the past five years, three fatalities occurred at one intersection along U.S. 212 in the county, and the project area has a higher-than-average crash rate.
“Many crashes were freight-related or roadway departure crashes that could be avoided by the roadway expansion, addition of rumble strips and reduced conflict intersections,” DOT stated, adding that a traffic study revealed that “a great majority of the corridor congestion is caused by crashes, which impacts efficiency of freight movement” for major local freight generators.
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New safety features will include reduced conflict intersections and a grade-separated interchange. A bridge will be built near the location of Bongards Dairy, a farmer-owned co-op established in 1908 in Chanhassen that is known for its cheeses.
“Bongards is a large dairy. They have lots of trucks going in and out,” Degler said, explaining how the bridge is needed to avoid creating a dangerous intersection for the dairy and local farmers driving with combines and wagons.
“You don’t want to cross a four-lane highway with a combine,” he said. “So we’re making a bridge to make it a lot safer for agricultural vehicles and agricultural equipment,” he added, saying the project is “going to make it safer for everybody.”
