Albertville's MnROAD Facility Shutttered as MnDOT Scales Back

The impact of a Minnesota state government shutdown on the Minnesota Department of Transportation will be major, but MnDOT Spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said the department is still be working to ensure public safety.

Closer to home, the Minnesota ROAD research facility, located off County Road 19 in Albertville, has also sent staff home, with no timetable for a return.

MnDOT hasn’t completely shutdown, but operations have been drastically scaled back from a summer that has already proven eventful.

If a road buckles in the heat, or a similar emergency road maintenance issue arises, there will still be crews available to make the repair, Gutknecht said.

“If there’s something that happens on a roadway system that impedes traffic and is a safety issue, we’re going to get to it as quickly as we can, but we won’t be doing things like mowing; we won’t be doing things like guard rail repair,” he said.

Still, it’ll be a small crew handling those needs.
There will be somewhere between 225 to 250 people out of the agency’s total of 5,000 that will still be working, he said.

Freeway Incident Response, Safety Team crews, the program directed at getting out to clear debris, accidents and assist stalled motorists, won’t be operating during the shutdown, he said.

Because the Regional Transportation Management center will be closed, traffic cameras and ramp meters won’t be operating.

“Traffic will have a different complexion,” in the event of a shutdown, he said, but it might be hard to tell due to the holiday because it might lighten traffic into next week.
Work on all of MnDOT’s approximately 100 active road construction projects in the state will be suspended, as well as any project that’s on state right-of-way, Gutknecht said.
The state’s road research facility, MnROAD, will also be shut down. Research director Marjorie Jensen said the state’s one-of-a-kind highway research site was to undergo a major facelift in July, but that won’t happen.

“We won’t be able to collect some very valuable data sets, at least for the next month, on the various cells on that strip of road,” Jensen said.

A major conference, with a five-year release of the MnROAD project’s findings, is also set for August.

Even some federally funded projects are being shut down, he said, because of MnDOT’s role in overseeing the project or in serving as a conduit for the federal money, he said.
Some cities and counties are continuing work regardless of a shutdown, and some are also suspending their road projects due to state involvement, he said.

Gutknecht said he wasn’t sure yet whether a shutdown might result in lawsuits from companies that contract with the state or businesses in the vicinity of suspended road construction projects.

“We’re going to have to wait and see,” he said.
Another remaining question is how much the shutdown will cost MnDOT in demobilization and re-mobilization and other additional costs, he said.

Contractors will be required to make sure that when they finish their work Thursday that the projects “are left as safe and as trafficable a situation as possible,” he said, and the contractors are also responsible for making sure they stay in that condition so that traffic can move through.

Major projects that will be stopped due the shutdown include the Highway 169/Interstate 494 interchange, a resurfacing project on Interstate 35E from Interstate 694 to the Forest Lake split and the Lafayette Bridge project, he said.

“(A shutdown will) certainly slow down schedules, it certainly affects the employees of the contractors who are not doing work, it certainly affects state employees who are going to be laid off,” he said.

Gutknecht said there are “concentric rings of organizations and people,” that will be affected in a shutdown from providers of construction materials to construction project subcontractors to the gas stations where construction workers usually stop and fuel up on their way to work.

Minnesota rest areas close at 5 p.m. Thursday night due to an impending Minnesota State Government Shutdown, said Minnesota Department of Transportation Spokesman Kevin Gutknecht

****
According to a  MnDOT Press Release
Active projects
-Work on MnDOT construction projects is suspended.  Contractor's equipment may be removed from the project.
-Contractors will close down projects in a way that best protects the safety of the traveling public.
-Also, 511mn.org, traffic cameras and other traveler information services are not in operation and project websites will not be updated.

Projects in the planning stage
-All public meetings regarding future projects are postponed. Websites related to future projects will not be updated during the shutdown.

Additional information

-FIRST trucks will not be operating. Call 911 to report a road emergency. There will be a small maintenance crew on call to handle emergency road repairs.