It’s hard to take a picture of a traffic jam when you’re in it, but here’s a seriously cropped attempt at capturing the scene in Duluth late Tuesday afternoon (a day before this happened):

Roadguy is accustomed to sailing along on Duluth’s freeways, so the congestion came as a bit of a surprise. But it shouldn’t have — one of the two main routes between Duluth and Superior is having some work done:

The nearest freeway bridge, the famously named Bong bridge, is a couple of miles away, so the situation isn’t quite what Winona went through. But if we want better bridges, we’re probably going to have to get used to some level of disruption: a MnDOT news release about its bridge replacement program is here, a Strib look at St. Paul’s Lafayette bridge is here, an Associated Press list of some upcoming projects is here.

And speaking of disruption, if you had read earlier reports about Hwy. 61 being damaged by high water this month, Roadguy can personally testify that the road is entirely drive-worthy from Duluth to the Canadian border. So if $4-a-gallon gas is no problem, head on up to the North Shore.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 6:05 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.