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[TheHighwayMan394]

The ice road between Warroad and the Northwest Angle across Lake of the Woods is back for a second year. It was first established last winter to bypass the Canadian border closures. However, it's an extremely expensive toll road - $250 per round trip.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/01/16/northwest-angle-ice-road?fbclid=IwAR12YAzEup3V6X7_NlNqrpDOmU57ImWpf1ee1fjkJ5ACBIgHXysxFLpcKxU

[triplemultiplex]

Do they accept MNPass?   

[skluth]

Do they accept MNPass?   

I hope they at least take credit cards as most people don't carry $250 cash around unless they're heading to the nearest cannabis dispensary.    

[MNtoOC]

Does anyone have a guess why the panel with information about Hudson exits was removed from this gantry on 94 east sometime in late 2018?

https://goo.gl/maps/2u4x9umxZVur2tpa6

[TheHighwayMan394]

Does anyone have a guess why the panel with information about Hudson exits was removed from this gantry on 94 east sometime in late 2018?

https://goo.gl/maps/2u4x9umxZVur2tpa6

The sign with this information was moved to ground level beyond the interchange (and looks like something WisDOT made while the original sign in question you asked about looks like a MnDOT install), though apparently replaced again with a standalone advance sign for WIS 35 North as had been in that spot originally.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9612441,-92.7752259,3a,75y,63.06h,94.89t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1si__c0BIHHYsugXoeLlwOpA!2e0!5s20190501T000000!7i16384!8i8192

[TheHighwayMan394]

Do they accept MNPass EZPass?   

Fixed for our northeast contingent. 

[invincor]

Does anyone have a guess why the panel with information about Hudson exits was removed from this gantry on 94 east sometime in late 2018?

https://goo.gl/maps/2u4x9umxZVur2tpa6

The sign with this information was moved to ground level beyond the interchange (and looks like something WisDOT made while the original sign in question you asked about looks like a MnDOT install), though apparently replaced again with a standalone advance sign for WIS 35 North as had been in that spot originally.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9612441,-92.7752259,3a,75y,63.06h,94.89t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1si__c0BIHHYsugXoeLlwOpA!2e0!5s20190501T000000!7i16384!8i8192

Yes, all the signage in and around the Hudson area was recently replaced and upgraded as part of the general construction in the area, including the more-frequent blue mile markers in the median which hadn't been there before.  We also now see US 12 reassurance markers co-posted on I-94 as soon as you cross the state line, which they hadn't bothered with before this either.

[TheHighwayMan394]

We also now see US 12 reassurance markers co-posted on I-94 as soon as you cross the state line, which they hadn't bothered with before this either.

WisDOT put a set on the St. Croix bridge right after the interchange with MN 95, which is amusing because it's still technically on the Minnesota side making it the only mention of I-94 and US 12 duplexing in MN other than at the I-394 interchange.

[Joe The Dragon]

The ice road between Warroad and the Northwest Angle across Lake of the Woods is back for a second year. It was first established last winter to bypass the Canadian border closures. However, it's an extremely expensive toll road - $250 per round trip.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/01/16/northwest-angle-ice-road?fbclid=IwAR12YAzEup3V6X7_NlNqrpDOmU57ImWpf1ee1fjkJ5ACBIgHXysxFLpcKxU

and are there any legal issues with that? They have no real power to do any thing if you don't pay? Can just do what an an private parking ticket can do?
Can't give real tickets for speeding?

[TheHighwayMan394]

The ice road between Warroad and the Northwest Angle across Lake of the Woods is back for a second year. It was first established last winter to bypass the Canadian border closures. However, it's an extremely expensive toll road - $250 per round trip.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/01/16/northwest-angle-ice-road?fbclid=IwAR12YAzEup3V6X7_NlNqrpDOmU57ImWpf1ee1fjkJ5ACBIgHXysxFLpcKxU

and are there any legal issues with that? They have no real power to do any thing if you don't pay? Can just do what an an private parking ticket can do?
Can't give real tickets for speeding?

They funnel the entrances to the road through a private resort to paywall the entrances, but if you figured out how to connect to the ice road from a public entrance to the lake there's nothing they can do beyond that since it's public waters.

[JREwing78]

and are there any legal issues with that? They have no real power to do any thing if you don't pay? Can just do what an an private parking ticket can do?
Can't give real tickets for speeding?

They funnel the entrances to the road through a private resort to paywall the entrances, but if you figured out how to connect to the ice road from a public entrance to the lake there's nothing they can do beyond that since it's public waters.

To be fair, there's a lot more to it than just setting up a toll booth and marking off a course. They also actively plow and maintain the route. You're not just going to drive onto the lake at a random location. The snow is too deep and the ice thickness is random enough one has a genuine risk of breaking through and drowning if they're off the maintained path.

Ultimately, Old Man Winter and Mother Nature team up with Darwin to enforce travelers to the Northwest Angle do it on the established route.

[TheHighwayMan394]

and are there any legal issues with that? They have no real power to do any thing if you don't pay? Can just do what an an private parking ticket can do?
Can't give real tickets for speeding?

They funnel the entrances to the road through a private resort to paywall the entrances, but if you figured out how to connect to the ice road from a public entrance to the lake there's nothing they can do beyond that since it's public waters.

To be fair, there's a lot more to it than just setting up a toll booth and marking off a course. They also actively plow and maintain the route. You're not just going to drive onto the lake at a random location. The snow is too deep and the ice thickness is random enough one has a genuine risk of breaking through and drowning if they're off the maintained path.

Ultimately, Old Man Winter and Mother Nature team up with Darwin to enforce travelers to the Northwest Angle do it on the established route.

Yep. Unfavorable weather has now closed down the through road, possibly for the rest of the winter.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/sports/northland-outdoors/operators-pull-the-plug-on-northwest-angle-ice-road-conditions-too-rough-for-plowing-to-continue?fbclid=IwAR0eOTjcAOPg86fdtNfLZ-kgqdl1Ot0R3nHVIKhhWyO2m9sTOQoYhekgOD0

[froggie]

^ Paywalled article.  Can you give a summary?

[TheHighwayMan394]

^ Paywalled article.  Can you give a summary?

Extreme cold had made the snow too difficult to plow, and a recent blizzard also broke up ice along the existing route.

[Molandfreak]

These 1958 articles refer to Minnesota's interstates by their constitutional route numbers. I thought the numbers of the two-digit highways were already planned at that point. Was the new I-35 construction marked as I-390 for a while? Why would they do this?

https://collection.mndigital.org/catalog/mdt:2029#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-734%2C-200%2C4257%2C3992

https://collection.mndigital.org/catalog/mdt:1977#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=1507%2C2241%2C1425%2C1336

[Mdcastle]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

[TheHighwayMan394]

These 1958 articles refer to Minnesota's interstates by their constitutional route numbers. I thought the numbers of the two-digit highways were already planned at that point. Was the new I-35 construction marked as I-390 for a while? Why would they do this?

I would guess they were just placeholders. Like most policy initiatives, it was unlikely they had all the details figured out when the bill was signed in 1956 given (as implied in the second link) that construction was going to take 15-20 years. The Minnesota state map doesn't show the nascent proposed interstate routings until 1959, and the original planned route of I-35 following US 69 instead of US 65 out of Albert Lea was shown well into the 1960s. Because the new freeways were mostly new construction rather than improving existing corridors, new legislative routes likely needed to be authorized by the state legislature.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/161.12/pdf

In the second link, the picture shows the interchange between "Interstate route 393" (MN 100) and "Interstate route 394" (US 65) (this interchange is today's I-35W/I-494 in Bloomington) while also noting their existing state highway numbers apparently being moved off of their previous parallel corridors onto the new freeways. US 65 was on Lyndale Avenue and I believe 100 and MN 5 were on West 78th St. So the new freeways had state highway numbers, just not their I- numbers yet.

[J N Winkler]

I have gone through pretty much every MnDOT signing plans set since the very first one on I-35W in Bloomington in 1959 (SP 2782-37), and I have never seen a single plan sheet calling for any of these legislative numbers to appear on a sign.  While it is distantly possible one or more of them might have appeared on temporary signing erected as part of a paving contract, I think it is far more likely that any such signing would have marked the new facility as a bypass or relocated mainline of the parallel US route, a very common strategy in the late 1950's/early 1960's.

Older plans sets do include the legislative route number in the highway designations on title sheets, plan sheet collars, etc. (i.e., not as part of the sign designs themselves), typically as something like "TH 35W=394," "TH 12=10," "TH 7=12," etc.  That is not true for current plans sets and has not been since about the mid-1980's, though I haven't pinpointed the exact years this nomenclature fell into disuse.

[invincor]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

[froggie]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

No.  MnDOT is Constitutionally limited to a state highway system of 12,000 miles or less.  And while the Interstates technically don't count given the language in the state Constitution (at least the way I read the language), MnDOT has operated as if they do count.  And there's probably a good reason for that.

[SEWIGuy]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

Wisconsin hasn’t always done that either. US-12 is really the only example of significant length.

[TheHighwayMan394]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

No.  MnDOT is Constitutionally limited to a state highway system of 12,000 miles or less.  And while the Interstates technically don't count given the language in the state Constitution (at least the way I read the language), MnDOT has operated as if they do count.  And there's probably a good reason for that.

And for the most part, the parallel old US routes that are now county roads are just as good of quality as any state highway, if not better in some cases. This is why I don't get as bent out of shape as others that our interstate emergency detours aren't state highways.

[invincor]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

Wisconsin hasn’t always done that either. US-12 is really the only example of significant length.

There's also WIS-16 alongside I-90, and later, I-94.  (Formerly US-16, of course.) 
And to begin with, those were the only two Interstates Wisconsin had.  The more recent three additions started out as US highways that were expanded to four lanes in stages and eventually promoted to Interstates after a few decades, so you can see why separate highways near them didn't happen.

[skluth]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

Wisconsin hasn’t always done that either. US-12 is really the only example of significant length.

There's also WIS-16 alongside I-90, and later, I-94.  (Formerly US-16, of course.) 
And to begin with, those were the only two Interstates Wisconsin had.  The more recent three additions started out as US highways that were expanded to four lanes in stages and eventually promoted to Interstates after a few decades, so you can see why separate highways near them didn't happen.

I-43 between Beloit and Milwaukee was WI 15, not a US highway. Also, a tiny bit of I-39 near Portage was WI 78. But what you said is essentially correct that they were not originally planned as interstates.

[mgk920]

It's interesting that very early on they decided they were going to put a frontage road on either side.

Did Minnesota ever consider keeping and maintaining the US routes that the Interstates were supplanting?  I'm thinking of the way Wisconsin continues to maintain a separate US-12 alongside I-94.  I've always thought of it like a superior frontage road.

Wisconsin hasn’t always done that either. US-12 is really the only example of significant length.

There's also WIS-16 alongside I-90, and later, I-94.  (Formerly US-16, of course.) 
And to begin with, those were the only two Interstates Wisconsin had.  The more recent three additions started out as US highways that were expanded to four lanes in stages and eventually promoted to Interstates after a few decades, so you can see why separate highways near them didn't happen.

I-43 between Beloit and Milwaukee was WI 15, not a US highway. Also, a tiny bit of I-39 near Portage was WI 78. But what you said is essentially correct that they were not originally planned as interstates.

Also, I-41/94 south of Milwaukee was originally WI 15 (120s era), then US 41.  It was completely four laned before WWII (all the way from 27th St in Milwaukee to Chicago's north side, then upgraded to a full freeway in Wisconsin within a few years of WWII ending.

Mike