A surveillance camera was installed on April 9 at the Ranier railroad crossing between Canada and the United States. Customs inspectors two miles away at International Falls can monitor rail traffic more efficiently. Photo by Bill Gardner

Mn/DOT surveillance cameras usually watch Twin Cities highway traffic, but a similar installation near International Falls provides another set of eyes to increase security at a busy border rail crossing.

The U.S. Customs Service requested the camera to heighten security as part of an overall upgrade initiated a couple of years ago. An average of 15 Canadian National Railroad trains cross the bridge daily, making it the third busiest rail crossing between the United States and Canada. The railroad crossing between Ranier, Minn., and Fort Frances, Ontario, ranks only behind bridges at Detroit and Buffalo in traffic levels.

The new camera gives Customs inspectors an easier, more effective way to monitor the bridge and trains. Previously, inspectors climbed onto the roof of the rail station at Ranier to observe rail traffic using the 500-feet-long lift bridge, said Customs official Craig Williams.

Bill Gardner, Freight Section director, and Bob Gale, Freight planning manager, Office of Freight, Railroads and Waterways, recently inspected the installation funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the railroad. The FHWA paid 80 percent of the $113,000 cost; the railroad contributed the remainder.

A truck crosses the bridge between Canada and the United States at International Falls. Trucks and rail cars share the center section because it can accommodate the heavier load. Customs inspectors say 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles cross the bridge annually. Photo by Bill Gardner

Plans also include installation of x-ray equipment within the next 18 months to inspect rail cars at the Ranier bridge.

Within 18 months, the United States and Canada will require surveillance cameras at nine more border rail crossings. In addition to the Ranier crossing, there are rail border crossings between Minnesota and Canada at Noyes, Baudette, Warroad and International Falls.

A few miles away, the International Falls border crossing includes rail and highway transport. The bridge has three separate sections—one on each side for cars going in each direction and a middle section for trains and heavy trucks. Approximately 200,000-300,000 vehicles each year cross the border at International Falls.

By Sue Stein

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Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg and other Northern Great Plains leaders signed a collaboration agreement on May 14 in Minneapolis. Representatives from Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba agreed to work together on transportation and economic issues.

A three-year study managed by Northern Great Plains Inc. found that trade within the Great Plains regions grew by 571 percent between 1992 and 1997, while goods and services exported from the region grew by only 91 percent.

Northern Great Plains Inc. received funding in 1999 from the Federal Highway Administration to analyze current and future opportunities for regional and international trade development and to match those opportunities with regional transportation needs.

Copies of the report are available at www.ngplains.org.

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Great progress has been made to date in planning the change efforts for Shaping Our Future, according to Deputy Commissioner Doug Weiszhaar.

"We will continue those efforts as we move to Phase II of Shaping Our Future, which involves devaluated functions that were not reviewed in Phase I or remained centralized," Weiszhaar said in a May 2 memo to managers. "As I’ve said before, Shaping Our Future is not a one-time, temporary effort. Shaping Our Future is an ongoing effort to create a new organization that is successful in the new environment."

Read more by clicking on the May 2 memo on the Commissioner’s Office site. See also the Shaping Our Future Web page for other updates.

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The Wakota Bridge project in Newport is one of Mn/DOT’s streamlining initiatives.

Mn/DOT’s streamlining efforts will soon make a difference where it matters most—results that provide relief from traffic congestion or improve mobility and safety.

Drivers in long queues waiting to cross the Wakota Bridge in Newport will have a shorter wait when the new I-494 bridge gets built there, thanks in part to the shortened construction plan content requirements that emerged from Mn/DOT’s streamlining initiatives.

When District 6 rebuilds 11 miles of Hwy 52 through Rochester, motorists will have a safer, less-congested route six years earlier than originally planned, due in part to using the new design-build process, another streamlining practice used on selected projects throughout the department.

The design-build process is one of the hallmarks of Mn/DOT’s effort to simplify and accelerate the highway and bridge construction process by overlapping design and construction.

The two projects represent Mn/DOT’s streamlining process joining the mainstream within only a few years of initiating the design-build process.

The department’s commitment to streamlining activities started in January 2001 when the Project Delivery Streamlining Team was created. Although the team completed its work, efforts continue to implement many of its initiatives.

Streamlining also comprises an integral part of the department’s Moving Minnesota initiative and Shaping Our Future strategy.

Mn/DOT now uses various streamlining techniques to accelerate planning and completion of projects such as the Hiawatha LRT, the Hwy 23 bypass at Paynesville, rebuilding of Hwy 169 near Lake Mille Lacs and widening of Hwy 100 in the western Minneapolis suburbs.

The momentum generated by the streamlining task force also affects other project development aspects, notes Del Gerdes, former streamlining team director who recently resumed his duties as director of Technical Support.

"In most districts, we have now placed highway pre-construction activities, such as pre-design and final design, under one project manager," he said. "That means there is one focal point which improves project coordination and communication and speeds project completion."

Other changes include an enhanced project and program tracking system, improved contract consulting methods and major modifications in acquiring right-of-way and other land management practices.

Streamlining led Mn/DOT to decentralize many land management functions and to employ the "footprint" process to plan right of way acquisition. The footprint process uses highway design parameters to determine the preliminary limits of needed properties and start the right-of-way process sooner.

Gerdes said Mn/DOT secured agreements with the Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to assign agency staff to help directly with major projects such as bottleneck and corridor improvements.

"Having DNR and PCA staff work in liaison roles will help smooth out bumps in the process and also helps them learn what we do," Gerdes said.

Gerdes said an attitude shift underlies the growing acceptance of Mn/DOT’s streamlining initiatives. Project and support staff, he said, know completing projects more quickly is crucial to meet the state’s rapidly growing transportation needs.

"We are under the mandate of the Moving Minnesota initiative to deliver our increased highway construction program on time with quality and within budget," he said. "Incorporating streamlining initiatives into our processes helps ensure our capability to do that."

Dick Stehr, Program Support Group director and leader of Mn/DOT’s change management efforts, explains that the streamlining process is an integral part of the Moving Minnesota initiative and the Shaping Our Future efforts.

"The streamlining philosophy supports delegating much of Mn/DOT’s decision-making to the districts and the Metro Division," he said. "This means placing authority and trust with the districts and Metro to make sure that a final plan or a consultant contract is correct, for example, or to get input from specialty offices at the beginning of the process."

Stehr acknowledges that the changes needed to fully implement streamlining are not easy ones.

"We are making major changes in areas such as Maintenance, Land Management and Traffic Engineering that require moving resources—including people—into new locations or reporting arrangements," he said. "And even when process improvements are relatively minor, they are part of a network of activities; it’s often very difficult to cut through a myriad of obstacles to untie knots that are 40 years old."

Stehr said that while putting streamlining and other process improvements in effect is arduous, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

"The risk is worth it because of the greater speed and efficiency with which we can complete projects. Mn/DOT people are committed to getting the work done," he said. "Streamlining is one way to speed process review, increase efficiency and enable decision-making to occur at the most logical levels in the organization."

By Craig Wilkins

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Dick Stehr is the new Program Support Group director.

Deputy Commissioner Doug Weiszhaar May 15 announced the appointment of Dick Stehr as Program Support Group director. Stehr has been serving as acting director since January in addition to leading the department’s change management efforts for the Shaping Our Future initiative.

"During this time, his leadership and commitment to making Mn/DOT work better to meet our program goals have proven that he is the right person to lead the Program Support Group and provide the vision for its future," Weiszhaar said.

Stehr has worked for Mn/DOT since 1976 in various management roles, including most recently as director of Program Delivery and as Metro division engineer. Before coming to Mn/DOT, he worked eight years for the California Department of Transportation.

Stehr’s office is on the 4th floor, Transportation Building. He can be reached at 651/296-3156.

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Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg testified May 10 before members of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in Washington, D.C. He was invited to address the committee as a leader in the national effort to implement Intelligent Transportation Systems, which include 511, road and weather information and congestion relief technology.

"ITS has emerged from being an end in itself to being a critical means for achieving a broader set of goals—including capacity, safety, security and reliability—in serving transportation users," Tinklenberg said in his remarks. "ITS can also play an important role in ensuring the security of America’s transportation system and in facilitating post-disaster emergency response and evacuation technologies.

"The goal is to invest once to achieve maximum utility for the highway, transit, public safety and emergency response communities as they serve the public and user."

Congress is looking at ITS as it prepares to reauthorize the federal transportation funding bill. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates funding needs for ITS initiatives nationally at $142 million a year.

Click here to read the news release, testimony and fact sheet.

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Say you’re looking for a specific right-of-way map or information on a state project but can’t find a paper copy of it. There’s still hope: many of these types of documents—and others—are beginning to be available electronically through Mn/DOT’s new Web-based document management system called CyberDocs.

Since April 2001, the department’s electronic document management system implementation team has been busy setting up the central infrastructure and coordinating the rollout of CyberDocs to a few pilot areas.

"Think of the system as a kind of electronic library that stores maps, pictures, plans—virtually anything that is in an electronic format," said Kay McDonald, Information Resource Management and project manager. Currently, the "library" contains more than 100,000 documents, including several thousand right-of-way maps.

And like a library, CyberDocs has an index that’s searchable in a number of ways, including by author, document type, key words, state project number, trunk highway number and parcel/location identifier. This makes it easy to locate documents in seconds, McDonald said.

"Electronic document management is a tool for managing the life cycle of a document," she said. "The idea is to make information more shareable with others, while maintaining the integrity and security of the original document."

The Mankato, Rochester and Willmar districts, as well as Metro Division, Bridge and Land Management are implementing the system using documents and data they create or collect. Metro Division, for example, focuses on capturing all documents related to Program Delivery (Planning, Design, Right of Way, Water Resources, Surveys, Materials and Construction), Traffic Engineering, Maintenance and State Aid.

According to Karen King, Metro Division project manager, the document management system will speed the transition from paper processes to electronic processes.

"The document management system has been configured so that everyone in Mn/DOT can use their Web browser to log on as a guest user (for anonymous access) and view documents that do not have security restrictions. That's very important," King said.

"If our goal is to share documents, then they must be easily accessible by everyone. Metro groups believe it is in the best interest of Mn/DOT as a whole to change their processes, store their documents solely in the document management system, and then direct others to access those documents via the document management system so it can become a ‘trusted source’ of transportation information," she added.

Luke Van Santen, chair of Metro’s Electronic Document Management Steering Committee, agrees.

"This is a first step in really streamlining our business processes," he said. "We’re getting people to think about getting all their information from a single source instead of maintaining separate (and usually redundant) information, which will go a long way in making Mn/DOT more efficient."

McDonald said that as the project ends, the project team is in the process of identifying future areas of implementation. If you have a potential business need for document management within your area, contact McDonald via GroupWise or at 651/296-8467 for more information.

If you are not a current pilot user, you can log into the system as a guest and view documents that guests may access. Go to http://metrodocs/cyberdocs, click on the Guest Log In button, and enter your search criteria. Note: you may have to switch to the "Master Search form" available in the pick list at the bottom of the page.

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A sealant failure on northbound I-35W between Roseville and Blaine on April 18 created a sticky situation for motorists and Mn/DOT alike. Employees from Metro maintenance, freeway operations, traffic engineering, materials and construction coordinated efforts and worked extra hours to ensure that the repairs were made in record time, according to Bev Farraher, Metro Division maintenance operations engineer. Photo by Kent Barnard

After a crack sealant used for repairs on I-35W failed during the afternoon rush hour on April 18, Metro Division staff went into overdrive to start emergency repairs and resurfacing.

By May 14, crews completed most of the repairs in spite of an outpouring of uncooperative weather.

The sealant failed when it became soft in the afternoon high heat and humidity. Motorists who drove through the area on northbound I-35W found the sticky sealant flying into the air and sticking to the tires and bodies of their vehicles.

The material was placed in the roadway late last fall during a routine crack-sealing maintenance operation. Temperatures in the 90s and rain during the middle of April apparently triggered the failure, according to Mn/DOT Metro Division Maintenance officials.

An investigation into the problem, which included testing the material at Mn/DOT’s Materials and Research Laboratory in Maplewood, determined that while the sealant met department specifications, it did not perform properly. The contractor also met the requirements of the contract and specifications.

Employees from maintenance, freeway operations, traffic engineering, materials and construction coordinated efforts and worked extra hours to deliver the contract in record time, said Bev Farraher, Metro Division maintenance operations engineer.

"Rising to the challenge, maintenance forces responded quickly to the sealant failure on April 18. The best plan for corrective action was determined the following day. Quick action also produced a package for competitive bid in time to let the project the following Friday," she said.

Emergency resurfacing began Monday evening, April 29, on the northbound lanes of the interstate between Hwy 36 in Roseville and Lake Drive (Anoka County Road 23) in Blaine. The aggressive, 15-day schedule meant long hours for Mn/DOT construction employees and the contractor’s crew. All-night closures each weeknight between Hwy 36 and I-694 allowed for increased productivity and safer working conditions.

While motorists have experienced congestion and delays, the project went smoothly, said Tom Krier, project supervisor. In addition to restrictions on work during rush hours, the rain provided an added challenge. Milling of the roadway surface continued through the rain, but paving was suspended during downpours.

Through Tuesday, the state mailed out nearly 300 claim forms for damage from the tar. Among the 88 claims received, amounts claimed range from $13.37 for a can of solvent to $1,400 for damage to a motor vehicle. Many other motorists have carried out clean-up operations on their own. Most motorists who called have been furious, but they calm down after being reassured that their concerns will be handled fairly, according to Gerry Heroff, tort claims investigator. Heroff adds that legitimate claims for damage will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Although the sealant failure occurred without warning, Farraher said, the results showed that Mn/DOT was able to rise to the challenge.

"This was an amazing situation, resulting in an amazing project that was achieved by amazing people," she said.

By Kent Barnard

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Officials from Mn/DOT, Kandiyohi County and the city of Willmar gathered on May 9 to dedicate the newly completed Kandiyohi Area Transit service facility in Willmar. Photo by Sandy East

Officials from Mn/DOT, Kandiyohi County and the city of Willmar gathered on May 9 to dedicate the newly completed Kandiyohi Area Transit service facility in Willmar.

The new building accommodates eight buses, the dispatch office and a maintenance area. The facility cost $360,000, said Beverly Herfindahl, Willmar District transit coordinator. Mn/DOT allocated $255,000 for the facility; the county funded the remainder. The city of Willmar provided trees and arranged for a group of high school students to plant them during Arbor Week. City maintenance employees will also complete landscaping the new site.

KAT was created in 1999 when the former Willmar Heartland Express service was expanded to serve all Kandiyohi County residents. Herfindahl said the new facility will help improve service and raise the awareness of transit options for county residents.

KAT offers dial-a-ride service from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Monday through Friday.

"By having all the staff in one location, the facility helps deliver better service and will give KAT a more convenient location and a more visible presence in the area," Herfindahl said.

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