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Highway 14 construction manager Todd Kjolstad walks along the clay surface being prepared for the new lanes of Highway 14 between Nicollet and New Ulm.
A bulldozer works on a portion of the Highway 14 expansion near Courtland.
A truck hauls dirt from a pit near Courtland while working on the Highway 14 expansion.
A truck drives through a new interchange being built on the new Highway 14 bypass of Courtland (in background) Wednesday.
Trucks move earth near one of the new lanes of Highway 14 near Courtland.
A bulldozer moves earth on the new lanes of Highway 14 bypassing Courtland Wednesday. The dry summer allowed solid progress on the 12.5 mile project from Nicollet to New Ulm which is expected to be completed in fall of 2023.
Highway 14 construction supervisor Todd Kjolstad looks over the new bridge being constructed over the highway at CSAH 37 near New Ulm.
A backhoe loads a truck hauling dirt along a portion of Highway 14 under construction near Nicollet.
A bulldozer works on a portion of the Highway 14 expansion near Courtland.
A truck drives through a new interchange being built on the new Highway 14 bypass of Courtland (in background) Wednesday.
A backhoe loads a truck hauling dirt along a portion of Highway 14 under construction near Nicollet.
A bulldozer moves earth on the new lanes of Highway 14 bypassing Courtland Wednesday. The dry summer allowed solid progress on the 12.5 mile project from Nicollet to New Ulm which is expected to be completed in fall of 2023.
From west of Nicollet to east of New Ulm, a 12.5-mile strip of land is swarming with workers and heavy equipment as autumn arrives and final completion of the mammoth Highway 14 expansion is just 13 months away.
Roadbed is being shaped, compacted and smoothed; interchanges are coming into focus north of Courtland and near New Ulm; old pavement is being pulverized into aggregate; stormwater retention ponds are being excavated; grass seed is being sowed. Even an 83-year-old wayside rest, long abandoned, is being restored.
Construction supervisor Todd Kjolstad of the Minnesota Department of Transportation was clearly pleased by the progress in the first year of the two-year project to expand the busy and crash-prone highway from two lanes to four. When it’s completed in mid-October of 2023, there will be for the first time an unbroken four-lane highway stretching from Rochester to I-35 in Owatonna to Mankato to New Ulm.
The $83.5 million project is the culmination of decades of effort by communities and businesses along Highway 14 to create a safer, more efficient roadway. Well over $600 million, not adjusted for inflation, has been invested in creating a modern 110-mile highway. But the finale is one of the lengthier projects in what has been a piecemeal expansion that began in 1959 near Byron.
The last segment involves moving a lot of earth — nearly 2 million cubic yards already. And that makes weather a critical factor.
Asked to rate, on a scale from 1 to 10, the climatological conditions for road construction in 2022, Kolstad said his answer has changed a bit over the past six months.
“From when we first started this project in March until mid-May, I’d say a negative 25.”
But it got much better following the miserably cold and wet spring, prompting Kjolstad to give a revised score of 8 for the entire construction season.
The warm and dry conditions of summer have left the project poised for a big final push before winter arrives. If all goes well, the two new lanes could get their driving surface between Nicollet and Courtland yet this year.
“We’ll get as much paving on the westbound lanes as possible this year,” he said.
That section and most of the rest of the project will have a concrete driving surface, which means paving can be done for as long as there’s above-freezing weather.
Nothing undermines the long-term durability of concrete more than having it freeze when it’s being laid, Kjolstad said. So the project will shut down for the winter when it looks like the prospect of additional stretches of above-freezing temperatures have dimmed. Until then, it’s full-diesel ahead.
Trucks move earth near one of the new lanes of Highway 14 near Courtland.
“Minnesota, we’ve got this window and we have to adhere to it. So we have to get a lot of work done. You’re somewhat at Mother Nature’s mercy when you are paving.”
The old concrete and asphalt on the existing two lanes of Highway 14 are being ripped up and ground into gravel-sized pieces to serve as the aggregate base of the new lanes. Combined with a high-quality layer of gravel just below the new concrete, that aggregate base will drain water away from the driving surface and to the edges of the road. Drainage pipes have been laid to collect the water and deliver it to numerous holding ponds along the roadway.
For the most part, the road is designed so any drop of rain or snowmelt on the highway right-of-way is contained within the right-of-way rather than getting diverted to nearby farm fields. In cases where water must drain onto private property, agreements have been negotiated to compensate adjacent landowners.
Kjolstad compares it to the water fights in the western United States. The difference is that in the West, people fight for the water. In farm country, they fight to keep it away. So MnDOT is collecting it in retention ponds, where contaminants settle out before it moves to tributaries of the Minnesota River or Swan Lake.
Although general contractor Hoffman Construction has had to open a few gravel pits to provide material for the doubling of Highway 14’s lanes, the vast majority of clay for the base of the road and even the aggregate for the higher levels of the road’s subsurface have been obtained from within the right-of-way.
It helped that the new bypass of Courtland cuts through a hillside just north of the town — a hillside that happened to contain clay and gravel needed for other portions of the road.
A truck hauls dirt from a pit near Courtland while working on the Highway 14 expansion.
On Wednesday, a large two-wheeled wagon was being pulled across the newly created westbound roadbed with two inspectors following to see if the aggregate surface was of a quality to bear the weight without creating a rut. It was a hefty test. The specialized wagon was loaded with 60,000 pounds of weight.
The road was passing muster except in one area where a mix of clay and sand-like earth proved to be a weak combination, prompting the wagon to leave a deep rut behind.
“So they’re going to have to dig that out,” Kjolstad said of the substandard soil.
Nearer to Courtland, Highway 14 will veer to the north rather than taking its traditional route straight through town. In the past three weeks, the new alignment has been taking shape all the way to the site of the new interchange that will serve Courtland.
The exit and entrance ramps are coming into focus, the locations for a pair of roundabouts are visible, connections to local roads north of the interchange are in the early excavation stage and large hills leading to the overpass of County Road 24 are undergoing compaction. Kjolstad hopes to see at least the bridge abutments for the overpass completed this year, maybe even the bridge beams.
Further west, the beams are in place for the County Road 37 overpass — the centerpiece of an interchange which will create a much safer entrance to the southeast end of New Ulm.
Highway 14 construction supervisor Todd Kjolstad looks over the new bridge being constructed over the highway at CSAH 37 near New Ulm.
Even as the crews focus on their various construction tasks, MnDOT is working to keep traffic flowing on local roads and on the official detour along Highway 68 on the opposite side of the Minnesota River. In the interest of minimizing disruption, the decision has been made to keep County Road 12 north of Courtland open over the winter, reversing a previous plan to shut it down.
And there’s also the issue of the fall harvest as some farmers find a large and congested construction zone between their combines and their fields.
Access issues were addressed at the most recent community meeting, “so those folks can get in and get their corn and their beans,” Kjolstad said.
And then there are the young drivers making their way to Minnesota Valley Lutheran School, located right along Highway 14 just east of New Ulm. Reconstruction and expansion of that piece of the highway will wait until after school lets out next spring.
For Kjolstad, who just passed his 25th anniversary at MnDOT, it’s a bit of an honor to be supervising the final leg of a project that’s been under discussion for longer than he’s been alive.
“This has been talked about since the 1950s, at least theoretically.”
Highway 14 construction manager Todd Kjolstad walks along the clay surface being prepared for the new lanes of Highway 14 between Nicollet and New Ulm.
The realization that it’s a big deal was driven home last spring during a pre-construction open house. He’d helped set up the poster boards in the Courtland Community Center before going to grab a bite to eat prior to the March 22 meeting.
Expecting three-dozen attendees or so, he returned to a standing-room-only crowd that might have approached 200.
“If I looked a little stunned, I probably was,” he said.
A month later it was dozens of politicians and other civic leaders — local, state and federal — at a groundbreaking at the MnDOT truck station in Courtland.
The pre-planning, preparations and pomp are in the past. Now, people just want the work done, and by all accounts, it’s going well.
Well enough that it seemed reasonable to wonder: Might it be open to traffic earlier than the scheduled date of Oct. 15, 2023? Is it possible it could wrap up by the time the MVL students return in late August or early September?
Kjolstad doesn’t even pause to entertain the idea of suggesting that it might potentially be possible if everything goes perfectly.
“No,” he answered immediately. “Nope. Nope.”
Instead, he warns that there’s always the possibility of delays if there’s bad weather in 2023 or if the contractor is hit with unforeseen problems.
“Hopefully people are patient,” he said. “I know they have been.”
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