Goodhue County awaits funding for Highway 52 project

Goodhue County Public Works and the Minnesota Department of Transportation have been studying a deadly section of Highway 52, and decided it can be made safer by putting an interchange at the County Road 9 intersection.

The large number of crashes that occur along the Goodhue County stretch of Highway 52 caused county officials to take a serious look at doing something about the road. Since last year, engineers from both MnDOT and the county have been studying the area to determine what the best solution would be.

“When we started looking at this we knew that we should have an interchange out there someplace,” Public Works Deputy Director Ken Bjornstad explained, adding that the real question was where the interchange should be placed.

Details of the study were presented Thursday at a meeting held just outside of Cannon Falls.

“What was kind of finalized at the meeting is the location would be at (County Road) 9,” Bjornstad said.

Although the plan has been figured out, the financing to make it happen has not.

“We went about as far as we can now,” said Sen. John Howe, who attended the meeting. “Now what we need is the funding for it.”

Howe spoke with Gov. Mark Dayton before the meeting Thursday and stressed to him the importance of fixing the problems at County Road 9 and Highway 52.

“That intersection is the second most crash costly intersection in the state of Minnesota,” Howe said.

The senator also asked Dayton about funds for intersection safety to help move the project forward.

“He said he’s very supportive of it,” Howe said about Dayton. “We’re going to keep working on it.”

The project falls within MnDOT’s long-term plans to make Highway 52 into a fully access-controlled freeway from Rochester to the Twin Cities.

According to Howe, MnDOT engineers have some solutions they are working on and will come back in the fall to present more information to the public about the project.

Tags: traffic, news, accidents