It’s also the start of road construction season and one busy North Metro highway is going to get some upgrades. Yes, cone zones are popping up across the Twin Cities – including a chunk of Minnesota 65 where construction between East Bethel and Spring Lake Park began in early April. “The pavement condition up here – to call it horrible – is probably an understatement,” said Kent Barnard from MnDOT.
The highway 65 project is going to focus on 19 plus miles of the highway from Anoka County Road 10 to 237th Avenue.
Said Barnard: “We’re going to be working on resurfacing, bridge replacement, culvert replacement and some cable median barrier.”
Drivers using this route will encounter nighttime lane closures beginning at the south end of the construction area and there will be some road closings and detours.
“At some point during this project we’re going to have some weekend closures,” Barnard said. “We’re going to have single lane traffic on whichever side of the road is not under construction. It will be head-to-head. We’re going to want people to slow down up here.”
$40 million tab
The tab for this project is approximately $40 million and part of MnDOT’s road improvements will be in Ham Lake.
“We’re at Coon Creek right now,” Barnard said. “We’re going to have a full closure here for about a month and a half to replace the bridge behind us. We’ve also got some work at Constance. That will be a Culvert replacement just north of Constance and then we’re replacing a culvert just south of Viking Boulevard.”
There’s no spinning it, highway 65 is in bad shape and needs upgrades.
“We’ve got some areas where the pavement has sunk and so we’re going to be replacing those sections of pavement,” Barnard said. “We actually have to go in to tear the pavement out, go down 20 feet possibly, maybe 30 feet and put in new fill and then build that back up.”
Cars and trucks using this concrete ribbon need to be extra careful in cone zones, and pay attention to MnDOT workers on or near the highway.
“The speeds on this roadway are incredible,” Barnard said. “Slow down.”
The project is going to be finished by mid-November 2024. To get more information go to the MnDOT web page and sign up for email alerts, or call 511, or check out 511mn.org.
