US 212 freeway--Chaska, MN

[midwesternroadguy]

I finally drove the completed US 212 freeway in Carver County this week.  A few observations:  the western terminus was odd in that the westbound lanes continued as two lanes west of the Jonathan Carver Pkwy interchange, but the eastbound lane remained singular until the very point of where the exit ramp diverged, then the 2nd lane started after that.  Knowing how Minnesotans like to decelerate in the mainline lanes prior to exiting, wouldn't it have made sense to have a second lane for deceleration, instead of clogging the one eastbound lane on a divided highway?  Second observation: an interesting eastbound BGS for TH 41 exit--elevated to overpass level on long posts, instead of being overpass-mounted; and lastly why the concrete pavement switched to bituminous southwest of the Creek Road bridge?  The blacktop portion is rather wavy already.   I'm assuming the soil correction for concrete was too expensive in this section.

As long as we're talking MN road surfaces, why does MnDOT resurface roads with different pavements for different carriageways that were originally constructed at the same time?  (i.e. westbound I-90 east of Lewiston was recently overlaid with blacktop on the original concrete, but the eastbound lanes were reconstructed in concrete.  I-35 has stretches like that.  Do carriageways really wear that differently?)

[Mdcastle]

Mn/DOT does crazy things sometimes like all other DOTs. I think the asphalt was to save money, they got X amount of funny money some years ago didn't have unlimited funds to devote to it. As it was, since the money was to be split between "metro" and "Greater Minnesota" they called US 212 part of both and took money from both pots.

I have noticed the different surfaces. It's possible they did one direction some time ago without funds for the other, so the directions were in different conditions for the present rebuild. US 2 is a highway that does wear different because there's a parade of fully loaded trucks taking grain and sugar beats eastbound from the Red River Valley to the Twin Ports.

[froggie]

I-35 and I-90, especially during harvest season, have similar load weight issues as US 2.  In I-35's case, northbound into the cities for distribution/transfer-to-other-modes.