Eagle Lake to Waseca portion of Highway 14 project to get funds

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

ST. PAUL -- Work on the segment of U.S. Highway 14 between Eagle Lake and the western outskirts of Waseca will begin next year, Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau announced Thursday.

In a telephone briefing, Molnau, wearing her transportation commissioner hat, said that project is one of 12 large-scale highway projects which will be "accelerated" with funds from the Pawlenty-Molnau administration's $900 million transportation package.

For the Janesville segment, dubbed segment B in Minnesota Department of Transportation's highway corridor construction plan, it means a July 1, 2004 start for construction, Molnau said. However, it's not clear yet just how long it will take to complete.

While Molnau said she was assuming it would be a "couple-year" project, officials at MnDOT's District 7 office in Mankato said later the 9.8-mile segment "probably won't be done until 2007 or 2008."

While that was good news for proponents of a Highway 14 expanded to four lanes, Dist. 7 officials said the bad news is that the construction starts for the Waseca by-pass (segment C) and the 10.5-mile segment (D) between Waseca and Owatonna actually will be pushed back two or three years because of the acceleration of the Janesville-Waseca segment.

That's because neither project was to a point of readiness in final design work and rights-of-way haven't been acquired for an immediate start under the governor's transportation funding package, Dist. 7 Information Officer Rebecca Arndt explained.

"We're looking at building C and D as one project. That's what we would ideally like to do and (are) working toward," she said. "We need to coordinate that with our Rochester district, however."

That means that the by-pass, planned for a 2008-2013 start, will be pushed back to a 2010-2014 construction start timeline. Work on the Waseca-Owatonna segment then would be pushed back three years because it was scheduled for a 2007-2011 start.

The Janesville-Waseca segment is a good example of the cost of delay in starting construction, MnDOT officials said. The original cost estimate for building the 9.8 miles of four-lane road was pegged at $32 million in 2001 dollars. Right-of-way costs totaled $2.7 million.

The project now is expected to cost $64.9 million, and that doesn't include right-of-way costs because the rights-of-way for the project already have been purchased.

Acceleration of parts of the Highway 14 project isn't going to speed up completion of the entire project because it can't be done through bonding alone, Arndt reminded.

"Only an infusion of federal grant dollars that don't have to be matched can do that."

Although MnDOT has begun work on a environmental impact statement for the proposed North Mankato-New Ulm segment, there were no guarantees offered by either Molnau or District 7 officials that the segment will show up in MnDOT's 10-year construction plan which will be revised this fall.

"We are doing what we call a concise EIS on that (segment of) 14. We know that a whole lot of it stays on present alignment. The two areas that were looking for re-alignment was at Courtland and Nicollet," District 7 Engineer Jim Swanson said.

"So, for the most part, we know the alignment of 14 so we have our people in agreement that we can do this with the dollars that we have."

MnDOT recently received a federal transportation grant for developing the EIS of nearly $1.5 million for the North Mankato-New Ulm segment which was to be matched on a 20-percent basis by state funds.

"I can't tell you that it's moved up to the 10-year plan," Molnau said. "What I can tell you, however, is that by advancing the eastern portion of 14, it certainly makes 14 (west of Mankato) a candidate for the future."