I attended a big meeting yesterday at the headquarters of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) in St. Paul. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the prospects for the future improvement of the I-494 – T.H.169 interchange given the State’s new transportation bill generated new funds for MnDOT. We wanted to see if the new money meant that the project might be accelerated, or if the new money might vault other area projects ahead of this one.
The meeting included the Mayors, City Managers and Public Works Directors of Eden Prairie, Edina and Bloomington. There were also City Council Members and other city staff from the respective cities. There were also a couple of representatives from Eden Prairie’s business community: Liberty Property Trust and SUPERVALU. Finally, there were also three State Representatives there: Rep. Maria Ruud from Eden Prairie; Rep. Ron Erhardt from Edina and Rep. Neil Peterson from Bloomington. MnDOT was represented by the Acting Director Bob McFarlin, Metro District Engineer Tom O’Keefe and several other high ranking MnDOT staff members. It was a large group of people with busy schedules who got together to talk about a very important project.
It was a productive meeting. MnDOT shared with us what they expect to receive in new revenue as a result of the new transportation bill. They will see new money, but a significant share of it will go toward the repair and replacement of bridges. That was a legislative mandate by the State Legislature. The second priority of the new money will be pavement preservation. Expansion projects, which is what they say the 494-169 project represents, are, at best, a third priority for MnDOT.
Nonetheless, Mr. McFarlin told us that the 494-169 project is a priority project for him. He has a long history with the project during his career at MnDOT. He told us that he would work with his staff and with the three cities to figure out a solution to get the project moving. He asked us to consider potential decreases to the scope of the previously approved improvement plan for the interchange. The message was that if we could decrease the cost of the project, which is estimated to be over $120,000,000, by decreasing the scope of the project, the project could be completed sooner rather than later. No surprise there. The cities said they would look at variations of the project scope proposed by MnDOT and get responses back to MnDOT this summer.
Meetings like this a necessary in order to set a path for creating a solution to a problem. We want the project to happen tomorrow. They don’t have enough money to do the project tomorrow. So what do we do? We talk. We compromise. We move the project forward by reassessing what’s important and what’s not. We’re going to get right to work on this. This project is too important to the traveling public and to the economic development prospects in Eden Prairie to wait another ten years. We need it sooner rather than later.
