In a strong town post, Charles Malone questioned the purpose of the $58 million project planned by the Minnesota Department of Transport (MNDOT), including six new roundabouts designed to raise the highway above Baxter’s major interchanges and drive traffic to surrounding strip malls and large box stores.
According to Malone, “Even the visual rendering of this project is absurd. With untrained eyes it looks like a heat dream for a highway engineer. For those who are familiar with how our transportation system works, it’s familiar in the worst way.”
The project is superficially designed to reduce crowding, but Malone insists that in practice it prioritizes maintaining access to business, “we don’t modify that conflict, institutionalize it, pour asphalt into bad ideas, and at least stand up to reality.”
For Malone, the project called “ButtonHook” represents “the physical symptoms of a bigger problem: refusal to let go of the Strode.” Marohn suggests that MnDOT should instead choose the first proposed alternative for the exchange. This is a low cost, single point design that addresses traffic issues, and proposes to remove left crossover intersections that often lead to crashes and backups.
According to Marohn, “This project is not a one-off failure. It’s a system that works as designed. We subsidize vulnerable inertia and call it progress.”
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