MnDOT

The design of transportation systems carries its own ideology: the routes, exit placement, the eminent domain actions, the financing, carpool or toll road lanes; all these issues loom large in Minnesota, especially since no one can agree how to pay for needed work. St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, the heart of the black community, got split in half by I-94, and many people today fear similar effects from massive new roads. Recently, people on the 'fringes' of the left and right who might be considered hostile to corporate globalization have talked about a 'NAFTA Superhighway' project which would link Mexico, Canada, and the United States, but little hard evidence illustrates how this plan could work. PIM first reported in July that a Twin Cities lawyer, Nathan Hansen, used Data Practices Act requests from MnDOT to get several rounds of documents released regarding NASCO, the North American Super Corridor Coalition, a non-profit organization based in Texas. Hansen has kept at it (here's his blog), filing a lawsuit to leverage the release of more documents, more of which finally came out recently. We have packaged everything MnDOT released into a ZIP archive of PDFs (60 MB!).

These MnDOT documents clearly show that NASCO was set up as a "systems integrator" to oversee NAFTRACS, a project led by Lockheed Martin's subsidiary SAVI Networks to build a complete cargo monitoring and security regime, which would include placing up to 200 RFID truck monitoring stations along Interstates 35 and 94. The entire 'Network Infrastructure' would be overseen by "Total Transportation Domain Awareness Centers of Excellence," which seemingly would fuse all available sources of data, including weather, RFID, cargo tracking, intelligence and security cameras, into NORAD-like Command and Control centers. Effectively, as the docs say, this would 'militarize' cargo along I-35, by cloning SAVI's current military shipping container tracking system at their "Lighthouse" research lab, which already runs the Pentagon's Global Transportation Network.

The NASCO/SAVI Letter of Intent clearly states that SAVI, i.e. Lockheed, would have exclusive rights to market the data collected by NASCO's 'Network Infrastructure'. NASCO's intended role as a 'systems integrator,' specified in their application for federal cash, seems a similar setup to the Coast Guard Deepwater arrangement that led to a complete mess, as PIM reported earlier this year. NASCO would control all sub-contracts for the system, with a focus on generating marketable business data and supply-chain logistics from everyone using I-35 for freight. In April, Brad Larsen, MnDOT's Federal Relations Manager, and the U's Center for Transportation Studies Director Bob Johns, discussed over emails that "it sounds like NASCO has a couple very interesting projects going on - the NAFTRACS project involves Lockheed." The other responds, "Our local Lockheed office seems to be a big player--influencing earmarks. Not sure what we will do." Elsewhere, the Eagan Lockheed office is described as a leading team for collecting the NAFTRACS business data.

I will resist speculating on 'what it all means,' since clearly this complex plan is international in scope. The document batch is hundreds of pages long, and I have not reviewed all of it. Your Web Editor, who discovered all this, wants to stress: this plan seems to promote long-range shipping at the expense of developing local economies, and it seems unreasonable for Lockheed to get all the data from such a plan. It seems like a way to put Lockheed in charge of maximizing imports from China, when our efforts could be better directed towards non-intrusive local economic development and non-contractor-dominated security systems, instead. This doc dump cries out for a mass of bloggers to digest it: are there any takers out there?

In this issue: MnDOT Under Siege: The Star Tribune's Agenda; The DFL's Agenda; The GOP's Agenda; Referendum Tipping Point?; Who Are These Guys?; Did Partisan Tactics Defeat R'Dale Referendum?; Bad Timing: Senator Coleman's Vets Vote; MinnPost Launches And Matters; Can't See The Forest For The Trees; Bits & Pieces; Lobbyist Watch; Setting The Record Straight.

MnDOT has released five documents on its website relating specifically to the I-35W bridge (bridge number 9340) which we have packaged into a zip file (35 MB). The files include an outside consultant review, a University of Minnesota Civil Engineering field report, two brief status summary documents, and, most troubling, a MnDOT "Fracture Critical" engineering summary which reveals in candid descriptions and shocking photographs the deterioration of many critical bridge elements. Here's my summary of the relevant parts of the documents, which we posted in our special Bridge edition of the Weekly Report last Friday:

A 299-page draft report prepared for MnDOT by the URS Corporation of Minneapolis entitled, "Fatigue Evaluation and Redundancy Analysis" for Bridge No. 9340, released July 2006.

The bridge collapse--in what's sure to be an excruciatingly painful process--will put the spotlight on what anyone who has worked in Minnesota transportation policy has known for decades: the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) is a mess. No one administration or political party is to blame. The Rudy Perpich (DFL) Administration (1982-1990), the Arne Carlson (R) Administration (1990-1998), the Jesse Ventura (I) Administration (1998-2002) and the Tim Pawlenty (R) Administration (2002-to present) have all made the same call. There are other, sexier things to fund rather than existing infrastructure and that's what's happened.

In recent years, "sexy" has meant $25 million in state bonding money for a new Guthrie Theater, located on the Mississippi River a mere several blocks from the collapsed bridge, and a new Twins ballpark. Funded with a .15% sales tax on goods and services in Hennepin County, it will be about half mile as the crow flies on the other side of downtown. Ironically, the ceremonial groundbreaking was scheduled for the night after the collapse but was canceled. And, let's not forget that the city of Minneapolis spent $3 million to move the Shubert Theater a few blocks (which stands vacant on Hennepin Avenue where it waits for state bonding money).

Those who have griped about the lack of adequately funding existing road and bridge infrastructure maintenance over the years, mainly the highway contractors, their subcontractors and the unions, never got very far because their interests seemed so self-serving. There was no traction among the general public, who thought new new theaters and stadiums were sexier than roads and bridges, too.

MnDOT has well-documented needs without the means to pay for them. Nationally, funding infrastructure needs has suffered the same "not sexy" problem, along with economics 101, funding guns v. butter. In Minnesota, there are no guns to pay for, but there are people funding needs that weren't in most of the government budgets of the 20th century. There was no "E" for early in the current E-12 education system and funding formulas (the funding of which consumes about half the state's current budget). There was no sense that government needed to provide health insurance for myriad categories of people.

Back to the Pawlenty Administration. There's added transportation funding rancor there that exceeds not just raising the gas tax. When Pawlenty first named Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau to be his Transportation Commissioner, hopes in the transportation community were high. As a legislator, Molnau chaired a transportation funding committee in the House. She "got" the MnDOT mess. The expectation was that she would straighten it out. She did not, for reasons I simply don't know but surmise to be the ones outlined above--no strong political direction to do the dirty work.

Finally, while on the subject of Minnesota transportation commissioners, one of the lowlights this past week was former Jesse Ventura Administration Commissioner of Transportation Elwyn Tinklenberg. Mere hours after the bridge went down, he was being interviewed on KARE-11 TV (our local NBC affiliate) standing in front of the dark Capitol building blathering (there is no better word) about MnDOT's "constant deterioration of the budget, constant layoffs, failure to replace people," etc. Most of what he said was not only not true, but it was crass in the immediate aftermath of the bridge falling down. And for the record, the collective opinion on Tinklenberg in the transporation job was much worse than Molnau's.

Shame on the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman and the rest of the left who are laying the blame for the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge on GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

We don’t even know the number--let alone the names--of people killed. Doesn’t matter to Coleman and his ilk. Take any shot to smear a Republican.

Writes Coleman:

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

"No New Taxes" has nothing to do with what happened, yesterday.

A few facts for Coleman. In general, the major bridges the federal government has built become the responsibility of states to maintain, and states routinely seek and are granted federal funding to help with the maintenance. The maintenance work being done on the I-35W bridge by Progressive Contractors, Inc., out of St. Michael, Minnesota, was on the list of projects of the 2007-2009 State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) list. Right there on page 116 of the report is the I-35W bridge. The $3.3 million price tag was being paid mostly by the federal government ($2.97 million) and not the state ($330,000).

The National Bridge Inventory conducted by the federal government in 2003 reported that the bridge had a "sufficiency" rating of 50% on a scale of 120. That’s not great, but that’s where about 80,000 of the country’s bridges stand. The significant finding of that Inventory, however, was that structurally, the bridge "meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is."

The federal government didn’t flag structural issues; neither did MnDOT.

Pawlenty could have raised the gas tax $50 a gallon and nothing would have happened. The structural condition of the bridge was not on anyone’s radar screen. At this point, that appears to be the real issue: All levels of government may have failed us.

But, specifically, Pawlenty and his administration have not. Those who blame Pawlenty and the Republicans for not raising the state’s gas tax since 1988 may want to review their legislative history. From 1988-1996, the Democrats controlled both houses of the state legislature. Transportation funding increase efforts stalemated among Democrats because urban DFLers wanted a permanent funding source for transit (the state gas tax is constitutionally dedicated to roads).

From 1996-2006, the Republicans controlled the House and the Democrats held the Senate. To be sure, "no new taxes" prevailed during those years. The last several years, the Legislature has sent funding increase packages that have been too rich in tax increases. The last one included a ten-cent gas tax increase along with an option by local governments--not the people--to raise the sales tax for transit.

These weren’t realistic packages.They were meant to embarrass the Governor.

Nevertheless, no matter how much money government has, it can’t fix a bridge that’s not on a list of bridges that need fixing.

For the record, in the 1990s, I did some work for the state’s highway construction companies. We lobbied to increase the gas tax by a nickel, and obviously, we lost. I believe the state does need to raise the gas tax (I happen to like to drive). If Democrats were serious about increasing transportation funding and not political grandstanding, they would send Pawlenty a a simple nickel increase bill. Bet he’d sign it…even before this tragedy.

Finally, thoughts and prayers to everyone at Progressive Contractors (P.C.I.). Owner Mike McGray runs a fine construction business, and from all we know at this point, it appears he lost at least one worker.

Some additional material: The I-35W bridge was completed in 1967. Many photos taken by the public have been posted on the Flickr service tagged under 'bridge collapse'. The new Minnesota 2020 thinktank quickly released a report by longtime Strib reporter Conrad deFiebre (who covered transportation) entitled "451 Minnesota Bridges 'Functionally Obsolete'."

SuperRondo Superhighway? MnDOT, NASCO, and plans for the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway

• UPDATE December 14, 2007: More documents from MnDOT were released in November, shedding further light on how NASCO is set up, its federal contract, and the effect of Minnesota's Lockheed office on earmarks. See PIM Exclusive: SuperRondo II: New NASCO NAFTA Superhighway Docs Released From MnDOT.
• The new batch of documents combines the MnDOT documents first described here in July, and the new releases. Download the 60 MB ZIP PDF pack here.

St. Paul's Rondo Days festival is right around the corner on July 21st. Rondo, of course, was the primarily black neighborhood obliterated when I-94 was built and blasted through, a route selected because of the neighborhood's lack of political clout. Deploying the "Stops-4-Us" message, the University Avenue Community Coalition plans to raise awareness about the potential damage to their neighborhoods because of the proposed Central Corridor light rail project, which they fear will remove parking, disrupt commerce and fail to offer enough stops for their community. The federal government wants fewer stops on the Corridor to reduce trip time, or else federal funds will be jeopardized. As one UACC organizer said to PIM, this federal policy has effectively removed transit stops from other urban communities around the nation.

On a much larger scale, proposals are now being drawn up for large transportation networks across America piggybacking on the interstate highway system. PIM has obtained documents from the Minnesota Department of Transportation about proposals to create major international transportation corridors along I-35 and I-94. The documents were obtained from MnDOT via the Minnesota Data Practices Act by local lawyer Nathan Hansen and posted on his blog and law firm's website. We have packaged the PDFs into a 66 MB ZIP archive available here through PIM's website.

The major group coordinating this effort is North America's Supercorridor Coalition, or NASCO. The MnDOT files include many strategic public relations emails among NASCO, lobbyists, government employees across the country, in Canada and Mexico, as well as grant applications specifying the exact nature of NASCO projects. Many emails among MnDOT personnel are also included. These documents formed the basis for a report by Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily, which also discussed MnDOT's views of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's (R) position on the matter. (Officially, he doesn't have one). The documents confirm that MnDOT agreed to join NASCO for a specially discounted price of $15,000, money that perhaps could have been better spent patching I-35W's potholes.