Pine City Pioneer: Hwy. 70 problems discussed at transportation forum
The old adage is that Minnesota has only two seasons, winter and road construction. While the snow is still falling, local, state, and federal governments are trying to figure out how to pay for upcoming roadway projects.
Minnesota’s Eighth District Congressman Rick Nolan hosted a roundtable discussion on transportation on Feb. 15 in North Branch. Nolan is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
“We have some huge challenges in transportation,” Nolan said. “There is an increase in basic maintenance need, never mind the need to expand and build transit systems to deal with congestion, and the decrease in revenues to transportation.”
Margaret Donahoe of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance said that there are big challenges facing the federal and state transportation budgets in order to pay for maintenance and expansion.
The federal fiscal year will end in September 2014 and the federal highway trust fund will end the year with only $1 billion, and the federal highway administration needs $4 billion to keep projects going, Donahoe said.
“We may be in a situation in August and September that payments could be delayed from the federal government to the states because the financial situation is so dire,” Donahoe said.
The short term problem would be delayed payments for project, but the long term problems stem from the inadequate revenues to the federal highway trust fund.
“The previous transportation bill at the federal level was the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), and that will also expire in September,” Donahoe said.
For projects in the Eighth District, most projects have been funded with a variety of sources to pay for the nearly 70 percent increase in cost of transportation costs.
“You talk about band-aids, and that is what our road has been getting,” said Lynn Zeleny of the Highway 70 Coalition. “We had expected a highway rebuild in 2008, and now it has been pushed back to 2015. There are more potholes, and in the spring there will be upheavals. There is a lot of commercial traffic, and vacationers going to their cabins.”
The highway rebuild project is considered fully planned, but is not completely funded yet.
Highway 70 has seen an increase in the last year in commercial traffic as frac sand is transported from Grantsburg, Wis. to Highway 61 into North Branch.
“It makes a heavy load,” Zeleny said. “Our road has been neglected, and if we took care of our roads, we wouldn’t need these meetings.”
Despite the need for more financial support for transportation, Nolan remained optimistic.
“It’s pretty good, all things considered, because there are a really good bunch of municipal and county officials that are using their local and state funds to keep bridges and road in repair, and are aggressive to go after federal funds,” Nolan said. “There is a lot of work to be done, and they are doing a lot with less.”