Mndot

More trouble with Texans for Norm Coleman. Politics in Minnesota recounts some tales about Fred Malek, the leader among a group of Texans who recently hired the former senator to head a new organization called America’s Action Network. Malek helped Al Checchi buy Northwest Airlines with mountains of debt in 1989, tallied Jews at the [...]

The Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, was the model for the Washington Avenue Bridge. Photo: AP via The Guardian

The 14th-century Italian bridge that inspired it has withstood the ravages of time, World War II and a 1966 flood, but the 42-year-old Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis might not be strong enough to hold up pedestrians, [...]

The Highway 43 bridge over the Mississippi River at Winona, Minn., became the latest symbol of Minnesota’s decaying infrastructure June 3 when the state Department of Transportation ordered it closed for at least six weeks due to possibly debilitating rust and corrosion. But the bridge was already a state symbol: Only 18 days before the [...]

At the Minnesota Capitol, pigs — or at least pork — do fly. Some pork, like the proposed state subsidy for a new parking ramp at the Mall of America, flaps its wings loudly above bipartisan cheers. Other pork flies by more quietly, below the radar – like a bill legislators from both parties sent [...]

Gov. Pawlenty has basked in wide praise over the last 24 hours because his pick to lead MnDOT, Tom Sorel, is an actual transportation expert — not a political hack like former commissioner Carol Molnau or a PR flack like interim MnDOT head Bob McFarlin. But Sorel (pictured above with former commissioner Carol Molnau on [...]

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced that Tom Sorel of the Federal Highway Administration will replace Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT). Molnau was ousted from the position in February amid concerns over mismanagement. She had held both posts at the same time but her tenure at MnDOT had [...]

The Minnesota Department of Transportation will not seek congressional help in building a replacement for the DeSoto bridge in St. Cloud according to a report by Lawrence Schumacher in The St. Cloud Times. The information was revealed on Wednesday in a letter from Rep. Michele Bachmann (pictured), R-Minn., to Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Bachmann, who is [...]

Words that begin with F and N: Michael Lacey, co-owner of Village Voice Media (City Pages’ parent company), apologized this week for using the “n-word” in his acceptance speech at an awards banquet on Friday, stating that it was “inappropriate” to use the term to honor his late friend, Pulitzer-winner Tom Fitzpatrick. But his apology [...]

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has had visual evidence of damaged gusset plates on the 35W bridge for more than four years, according to a Star Tribune report. It appears that URS Corp., the company that MnDOT hired to look at the structural stability of the bridge, took the images for the department in the [...]

Two months after National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker was himself accused of distortions (Daily Mole, Oberstar) over the role of gusset plates in the I-35W bridge collapse, the Minnesota Department of Transportation closed St. Cloud’s DeSoto Bridge “due to gusset plate distortions.”

The DeSoto Bridge on Highway 23, a close cousin in design to [...]