In the heart of the state’s Emergency Operations Center, Bob Vasek, Mn/DOT’s emergency management coordinator, keeps tabs on incoming messages as a live feed from CNN displays the World Trade Center's twin towers in the background. Several other Mn/DOT employees volunteered to staff the hotline phones Tuesday and Wednesday.The SEOC and the hotline closed at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday. Calls to the hotline will go to the state duty officer. Vasek and Kent Barnard, Mn/DOT’s communications liaison, will remain on call through the weekend. Photo by Kent Barnard

A phone call from Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg, who was in Washington, D.C., Sept. 11 when the Pentagon was attacked by terrorists, assured staff in St. Paul that he and members of his group were okay. They were two miles away from the military complex when it was hit Tuesday morning by a hijacked airliner with 64 people aboard.

"The past two days have been filled with immense emotion for all of us," the commissioner said from his hotel room. "All across the nation we have been united in grief and anger unparalleled in our history. I appreciate all Mn/DOT employees for persevering throughout this time to keep the department operating.

"Our prayers go out to the victims of this senseless tragedy and to their families."

Accompanied by Chief of Staff Margo LaBau and Director of Federal Affairs Dan Krom, the commissioner had testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Monday. (See article below.) He was scheduled to meet with Minnesota's congressional delegation on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, but that meeting was canceled and the area evacuated because of additional threats on the nation’s capital.

The three had been scheduled to return to the Twin Cities Tuesday evening. All air travel in the U.S., however, had been suspended at least through Wednesday. They are trying to find an alternative way home, the commissioner said.

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Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Sept. 10 about using technology to move the nation into the 21st century.

Representing the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials before the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety, Tinklenberg spoke of the many benefits technology brings on a national and local level. He acknowledged the vision and foresight of committee members for including intelligent transportation systems as a key component of federal highway and transit programs.

Tinklenberg, who chairs AASHTO’s Advanced Transportation Systems Subcommittee, spoke specifically about the work in Minnesota.

"ITS technologies have already proven their effectiveness in improving our operations while increasing our safety," he said. "In the Twin Cities, adaptive signal systems combined with ramp metering have improved freeway travel time 22 percent, reduced crashes by 24 percent and improved freeway throughput by 14 percent. Use of our Road Weather Information System provides motorists with real time information, and improves winter maintenance, significantly reducing accidents on highways and bridges. A computer-aided dispatching system for emergency vehicles is saving lives."

These and other success stories are mirrored across the nation, Tinklenberg said. From transportation management centers to the cooperative development of 511 traveler information deployment, ITS has fostered unique and effective partnerships between federal, state and local agencies, industry and national associations such as AASHTO.

In closing, the commissioner said, "In the last 10 years, ITS has turned the corner from a vision to a reality, and has demonstrated its powerful potential for transforming our transportation system. ITS deployments have made significant improvements in rural, urban, transit and commercial vehicle applications. Not only that, they have produced new partnerships never before envisioned, transferred advanced technology from NASA and the defense industries, and enabled us to stretch the use of our transportation system in new ways."

ITS technology is a key component of a new focus on transportation system operations, and will be highlighted at the upcoming National Summit on Operations Oct. 16-18.

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Sugar beets are loaded into a truck in a producer's field in west central Minnesota. During the fall, this seven-county area sees approximately 200,000 non-commercial trucks hauling harvested crops from farm to market. Photo courtesy of Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Co-op

As surely as fall follows summer, the state’s sugar beet harvest turns normally quiet stretches of western Minnesota’s rural roads into busy avenues of commerce. The beet haul often goes around the clock as growers race to get their beets out of the ground and into the processing plants before the ground freezes.

And the beets are not the only farm commodities moving. Potato growers, wheat farmers and others are moving their crops to storage or to market during the harvest season.

In order to keep the heavily laden farm trucks moving, Mn/DOT issues permits for sugar beet and potato movers to carry heavier loads during the harvest "rush hour" which can last for weeks.

Last year, officials in the Willmar and Detroit Lakes districts issued more than 1,100 permits for beet and potato movers. The permit allows haulers to carry a 10 percent weight increase over normal legal weights for first haul only from field to first unloading site, notes Alice Janiszeski, customer service specialist at Marshall.

Motorists are advised to use extra caution at night and during inclement weather because of the high volume of truck traffic. They also need to be aware of slower moving vehicles and mud or other debris on the roadway.

Because freshly harvested beets can be wet and muddy, mud often drops from the beet trucks. Mn/DOT will remove mud at the request of area law enforcement officials; however, Mn/DOT may bill the responsible party for cleanup service.

By Craig Wilkins

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Mn/DOT’s offices of Environmental Services and Technical Support have implemented some shifts in their organizational structures.

Landscape Architecture and related functions have been consolidated in Technical Support. Previously, both offices had landscape units responsible for advising district planners and designers on roadside plantings, rest area environments and community entrances.

Cultural Resources, the unit responsible for review, documentation and guidance on the historic and archeological impact of transportation projects, has moved from Technical Support to Environmental Services.

Merritt Linzie, Environmental Services director, said the moves support the needs of program delivery and reflect the department’s commitment to context sensitive design and focus on interregional corridors. Dick Elasky serves as director of Technical Support.

By Jeanne Aamodt

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Dave Ekern, assistant commissioner for National and International Programs, has accepted a mobility assignment as an associate director with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, announced Deputy Commissioner Doug Weiszhaar. His appointment is effective Sept. 17.

Ekern has been central to coordinating Mn/DOT's national initiatives with AASHTO and the Transportation Research Board, according to Weiszhaar.

"We are all excited about this opportunity and new agreement, and believe that the transportation industry in Minnesota and the nation will be well-served by the contributions Dave will bring to this assignment," he said.

Steve Lund was named as area maintenance engineer at Rochester. Before his appointment, Lund served as the Metro Division maintenance operations engineer. Lund’s appointment becomes effective Sept. 24. He succeeds Bernie Arseneau who was appointed as assistant district engineer for contract delivery.

Lund will join a restructured Rochester District management team. The team comprises Nelrae Succio, district engineer; Tony Hames, ADE for program delivery; Gary Bruggeman, Owatonna area maintenance engineer; Greg Paulson, assistant district engineer for state aid and bridges; Judy Schmidt, district administrative manager, Arseneau and Lund.

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The GIS BaseMap includes information about roads, railroads, navigable waters, district boundaries, civil townships, state and national forests and parks, and Indian reservation lands.

Where can you go to see the routes for all roads in a specific county, not just the trunk highways? How do you know which cities, townships, or roads are in your project area?

You can answer questions like these and others by using information from the new, enhanced BaseMap, now available on the Web at http://rocky.dot.state.mn.us/BaseMap.

The Mn/DOT BaseMap is a set of transportation and transportation-related data developed specifically for use in a Geographic Information System. The BaseMap is a single source of information for Mn/DOT practitioners as well as other state, local and private partners who worked cooperatively with Mn/DOT to develop the data, said Denny Brott, GIS supervisor, Land Management.

"Trunk highways are just a part of a larger, interconnecting system of roads," Brott said. "Information about the entire system, all in one location, is invaluable to all the different jurisdictions and agencies that have to manage those roads separately and in cooperation with each other."

BaseMap includes information about roads, railroads, navigable waters, district boundaries, civil townships, state and national forests and parks, and Indian reservation lands. This information can help planners, designers and project managers do crash mapping, pavement forecasting, asset inventories, traffic flows and collect rail crossing fatality information, according to Dan Ross, GIS project manager, Business Operations.

"In the past, BaseMap data was only available to external users on CD once a year," Ross said. "Updates to the data can now be posted as they occur and accessed immediately."

Road information is available county-by-county and includes roadway names. Related information is available at a statewide level. Currently, 18 of the county road files have routes built on them; all other county road files are available as line-work. As further county routes are completed, they will be posted. Check the Web site periodically for updates.

For more information about the BaseMap Web site or how to access BaseMap data, contact Dan Ross at 651/282-6113 or Denny Brott at 651/296-1680.

By Donna Lindberg

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The Congestion 2000 market research study is just one of more than 50 studies summarized into one page and posted on Mn/DOT's internal Web site.

What do noise walls, mural art, HOV lanes, rest areas, bright signs and pavement markings have in common? They have all been the subjects of Mn/DOT market research with the department’s external customers.

Summaries from these and more than 50 other studies are now available on Mn/DOT’s intranet site.

The summaries offer one-page snapshots—including information about the objectives, key findings, methodology and intended use—for each study.

"These pages represent the work of more than seven years of Mn/DOT market research," notes Chris McMahon, Market Research. "The individual studies, together with the customer segmentation study conducted in 2000, give us a big base of knowledge about who our customers are and how they value Mn/DOT products and services."

Check out the summaries at http://www2.dot.state.mn.us/ocpr/market/topics.html. Learn more about the staff and products and services of the Mn/DOT market research section at: http://www2.dot.state.mn.us/ocpr/team/market.html.

By Kay Korsgaard

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Editor’s note: On July 12, a truck traveling westbound on I-694 at I-35E lost a load of granite on the road. Large chunks of rock covered about 150 feet of the left and right lanes, and the guardrail sustained extensive damage as a result of the granite sliding across the road and striking the posts.

Jim Michael, maintenance superintendent for Metro Division's central region, received this letter, which reads, in part:

…. Within a few minutes there were several maintenance employees from the Maryland shop along with a front-end loader on scene. The purpose of my letter is to inform you that the Maryland shop workers did an extraordinary job of quickly responding and cleaning up the road. Not only did they quickly respond and get to work but they did so in an area that they do not usually cover. I, along with the troopers who were on the scene with me, greatly appreciated the efforts that were put forth to reopen the interstate as quickly as possible.

--Trooper Matt Langer, State Patrol

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