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County commissioner hails start of Highway 65 safety project in Blaine
Summary
At a ceremony in Blaine, an Anoka County commissioner celebrated the start of a multi-mile project to reconfigure Trunk Highway 65, saying it will remove stoplights, reduce crashes and improve regional access; officials said planning, design and funding are in place.
An Anoka County commissioner marked the start of construction on a roughly 3-mile stretch of Trunk Highway 65 in Blaine, saying the project is intended to make the corridor safer and easier to travel.
The commissioner told the gathering that the work has moved from planning and design into construction preparations and that funding for the project has been secured. Relaying a comment from the mayor, the commissioner said the mayor had described the project in one sentence: "The stoplights will go away." The commissioner framed that change as central to reducing congestion and crashes on the corridor.
Why it matters: the speaker pointed to a string of safety statistics to explain urgency. He said the corridor currently contains four of the six most dangerous intersections in the Twin Cities metro area and 10 of the state's 31 most dangerous intersections, and that fatal and severe-injury crashes have occurred at a rate about eight times the state average. Officials at the ceremony said those figures helped motivate the county to move ahead with the redesign.
The commissioner also described Highway 65 as a regional gateway, noting nearby destinations including the National Sports Center and a PGA tournament facility that increase traffic volume beyond local use. "When project is complete, Highway 65 will be safer, less congested, and far easier to travel to and through," the commissioner said.
What officials said next: speakers at the event emphasized that the project progressed through planning, design and securing funding and will proceed toward pavement. The motion to fund or phasing details were not described at the ceremony and a construction timeline was not specified at the event.
The ceremony included a public celebration with remarks from county officials and local leaders. Officials present thanked fellow commissioners for supporting the project and described the effort as the culmination of years of local advocacy and planning. The commissioner said the corridor’s high crash rate has been a recurring local topic for more than two decades and that the project aims to end that discussion.
The project scope, precise schedule and final funding allocations were not provided in detail at the event.
