ABC 6 News — Nov 9, 2021
(KSTP) – It’s too soon to say exactly which highway and bridge projects will get funding in Minnesota after the passage of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, but we do know more than $6 billion will be headed to the state. The Minnesota transportation commissioner says it will benefit state, county and city projects.
“This money comes and it also goes to our counties and our cities as well through our formula program,” Transportation Commissioner Margaret Anderson Kelliher said. “And so cities and counties will also be able to make these investments.”
In addition to some major projects at the state level, Anderson Kelliher says the state will also make investments to improve highway safety. “We’ve been doing some work already to prepare more safety projects. The level of crashes in Minnesota is unacceptable. Across the country it’s unacceptable and so we’re going to look for places where we can make those investments more immediately.”
Of the more than $6 billion earmarked for Minnesota, the bulk of it will be spent on highways: about $4.5 billion. There’s another $302 million for bridges, $818 million for public transit, $680 million for water infrastructure and $100 million for broadband expansion.
“It’s clean drinking water, pedestrian safety and electric vehicle charging and climate resiliency, it is broadband,” U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-3rd District, said at a news conference at the Minnesota Transportation Building. “It is everything that our communities ask us for every single day.”
Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, says she’s excited about getting funding for highway projects in her suburban district.
“Someone once asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, I want to fix the damn roads.’ That’s what I want to do,” she said.
It will be months or more before we know which roads will get fixed.