Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

By the time readers struggle through this column, a few local and MnDot officials will have officially “cut the ribbon” on the Highway 29 overpass project.

The two-year project that has been a bit of a disruption for northbound motorists will open by the end of this month, we’re told.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the occasion by having the first vehicle drive over the new Highway 29 overpass.  It will be open to the public, if the weather cooperates, by the end of October, or very close to the end of the month.

The project, which included building an overpass over a newly aligned Highway 55 and the CP railway that once held up Highway 29 traffic, also included two roundabouts.

On of the roundabouts is located on Highway 55 and one is located on Highway 29.  The Highway 55 roundabout opened last fall and seems to be working out very well.  Construction of the second roundabout, on Highway 29, was mostly completed a few weeks ago.  It too does it’s job and provides vehicles with a safer method of moving along Highway 29 or venturing off into Marthaler’s Chevrolet or heading toward Highway 55.

Completion of the project has been a long time coming for most of us.  It started in the spring of 2021 with the Highway 55 roundabout and the realignment of that highway closer to the CP railway to reduce the span of the overpass.

Then this spring, construction of the Highway 29 overpass started in earnest with our own Schroeder Construction, Inc. doing the bridge work.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation and Pope County partnered on the two-year project to build an overpass .  As the MnDOT information states, the overpass will eliminate an “at grade” crossing with the CP Railway System.

It will also eliminate the existing and undesirable skewed intersection of Hwy 29 and Hwy 55, moving the junction south to 160th Street and giving the intersection a perpendicular approach. 

It will also mean that through traffic on Highway 29 will not have to wait as trains move into the Canadian Pacific depot in Glenwood.  That wait could be anywhere from a few minutes to more than a half hour.

Many motorists have been caught in the delay and it was also a safety hazard if there was an emergency on the north side of the tracks.  Emergency vehicles could be blocked by a train and lose important minutes trying to drive around it.

That said, we’re glad the project is coming to an end.  It is a great improvement for local residents as well as those who are driving through our area.  It adds safety, eliminates the train crossing a major highway and eliminates the wait time for our ambulance and other emergency response teams on their way to a mishap just north of Glenwood.

Thank you to MnDot, our state representatives, especially Rep. Paul Anderson, and to our Pope County Commissioners, especially Gordy Wagner, for coming together to make the much-needed project a reality.

Now, after a couple of years of disruption, we are just a few weeks away from a functioning overpass and businesses in that area can again get back to some normalcy.