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ST. PAUL, Minn. – On Tuesday, Oct. 20, motorists traveling on Interstate 94 between St. Cloud and Rogers may notice what appears to be emergency response to a crash at mile marker 198, the MnROAD research facility near Albertville.
Staff from the Minnesota Department of Transportation and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety will stage an automobile crash on the test section of roadway at the MnROAD facility as part of a new public service announcement highlighting changes to the state’s Ted Foss “Move Over” Law.
The emergency vehicles may create the potential for a gawker slowdown in the area. Crews will arrive by 8 a.m. and should be finished filming by 5 p.m.
Minnesota’s Ted Foss “Move Over Law” requires motorists on multi-lane highways to move one lane away from emergency vehicles with flashing lights on the roadway or shoulder. The law now includes maintenance vehicles and Mn/DOT’s freeway service patrol, FIRST.
MnROAD is a pavement test track used to research materials and pavements to find ways to make roads last longer, perform better, cost less to build and maintain, be built faster and have minimal impact on the environment.
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This article was posted by the StarTribune early on Tuesday, July 14th. It highlights a lot of the problems overloaded I-94 has. Now does widening I-94 ensure something like this doesn’t happen? No. There will always be drivers that aren’t fully focused on the task at hand. It does, however, give drivers more options to avoid an accident instead of driving off the road in the case of the gasoline truck.
By JIM FOTI From the Star Tribune
A pair of rolled-over trucks forced Minnesota drivers to spend countless hours in traffic jams the past two days. While they stared at the gridlock before them, worried about the dog at home, and wrangled with the kids in the back seat, they had to wonder: What on Earth was taking so long?
Think of it this way: How long would it take to remove 40,000 pounds of fish from your freezer?
An accident that takes seconds to happen becomes a traffic backup that takes hours to fix because it sets in motion all kinds of damage-control decisions invisible to the stalled motorist.
The first crash, on Sunday in Albertville, involved thousands of gallons of spilled gasoline and diesel fuel and was the more dangerous — and inconvenient — of the two. Interstate 94 was shut down in both directions for nine hours.
Drivers reported delays as long as three hours as they were diverted to Hwy. 10, an already busy route for weekend “up north” traffic returning to the Twin Cities. In the online venting that followed, one person fumed about missing a flight to Texas, another about missing “my dad’s 75th Birthday Party!!!!”
Fuming of another kind — tanker fumes — was a major factor in closing both directions of the freeway even though the flipped tanker truck was traveling west and partly landed in the median, said Dan Whebbe of the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Fumes can catch fire, and, if “all of a sudden the wind changes, you can’t just block off that lane that fast.”
Another reason is the gawker effect, which would have slowed eastbound traffic, said Kevin Gutknecht, MnDOT’s communications director. He was returning to the Cities from Camp Ripley and found himself in the slowdown on Hwy. 10. He decided to view it as a learning experience. “Once I got to Elk River, it cleared up.”
That stretch of I-94 sees about 62,000 vehicles on an average day, and a Sunday afternoon in the summer is probably quite a bit higher than average, Gutknecht said.
Many drivers grumbled that there was a lack of information. Whebbe said changeable message signs about the closure were deployed as far west as Albany, west of St. Cloud, while Judy Jacobs, a MnDOT spokeswoman, said radio stations were notified starting at 11 a.m., shortly after the crash.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency was on the scene and armed with a considerable checklist. With 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of fuel spilled, the agency used digitized maps to locate storm sewers, bodies of water, wells and utility lines that may lie beneath the median, and to try to determine whether the soaked soil needed to be cleaned up immediately or could wait until after the highway reopened, said spokesman Sam Brungardt.
About 3,000 gallons of liquid — mostly fuel, but some water — got sucked up and carted off, while thousands more gallons still in the tanker needed to be removed before it could be righted.
Read the rest of the story HERE.
Last update: July 14, 2009 – 5:26 AM
Posted in Accident, Incidents on 94, Slow Downs | No Comments »
By HERÓN MÁRQUEZ ESTRADA From the Star Tribune
“Not too long ago, an out-of-town VIP found himself in Bloomington at 2 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and needing to be in St. Cloud for a meeting by 4 p.m.
Getting on Interstate 94 and heading west, he thought he had plenty of time. Instead, he got stuck in traffic going from Rogers through Monticello and was late for his meeting.
Thus did Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, learn firsthand what people in that area have been saying for years: I-94 traffic jams are giving people headaches.
“We don’t have anything [else] slowing us down — just the traffic,” said Kathleen Poate, president of the I-94 West Chamber of Commerce. “On any given [day] the freeway is just bumper-to-bumper.”
Poate and the chamber are leading the charge for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to improve the Interstate by adding more lanes.
It was during the group’s initial meeting that community officials and business leaders first heard about the Oberstar trip from a member of his staff, Melissa Jabas, who was with him on the trip and attended the coalition meeting.
“We’re hoping that that helps us a little bit,” Poate said. “He is the head of the Transportation Committee.”
What the coalition wants is an extra lane in both directions from Hwy. 101 near Rogers to Monticello in Wright County.
Poate and the coalition estimate that turning the 14-mile stretch into a six-lane throughfare, and doing some bridge repairs along the way, would cost about $200 million.
Additionally, the coalition is proposing adding lanes in both directions from Hwy. 101 southeast to I-494; turning that stretch into an eight-lane corridor would cost $254 million.
Last update: November 22, 2008 – 9:48 PM
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Amy Klobuchar , Michele Bachmann & Erik Paulsen
For listening to their constituents, their continued support and interest in keeping this project moving ahead.
- The I-94 Coalition
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