Detour approved for Highway 14 construction project

Culvert replacements planned on U.S. 14 in 2027

MARSHALL -- Road work is planned on part of U.S. Highway 14 next year, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation is proposing a detour.

This week, Lyon County Commissioners approved an agreement for a detour route that would include Lyon County Road 2 west of Russell.

"They've asked Lincoln County and Lyon County to offer our county roads as a detour. It would be County Road 2 going west of Russell, that goes between Russell and Tyler," Lyon County highway engineer Aaron VanMoer told commissioners Tuesday. "That is what I recommended they use, and that's about six miles of county road."

"County Road 2 is in good shape," VanMoer said. "It was just resurfaced three or four years ago."

MnDOT is planning to do reconstruction work on part of U.S. Highway 75 in Lake Benton, along with resurfacing work and culvert replacements on Highway 14 between Lake Benton and the Lincoln/Lyon County line. The construction is planned to take place in 2027, according to the MnDOT District 8 projects website.

Because the work on Highway 14 will include replacing culverts, the project will involve road closures, the MnDOT website said. A proposed detour for Highway 14 would route traffic north of Lake Benton and Tyler, along Highway 75, Lincoln County Road 13/Lyon County Road 2, and Minnesota Highway 91.

"That's a long detour," Commissioner Rick Anderson said Tuesday. "That's a long ways out of the way."

"So for the span of that detour, any closer option would be gravel, then? There's no other hard road between (County Road) 2 and (Highway) 14?" said Commissioner Paul Graupmann.

Commissioners said there were other county roads that led into Tyler, like County Road 16. However, VanMoer said he believed Lincoln County had a project on their portion of the county road. That might be why it wasn't proposed as a detour route, he said.

At Tuesday's Lyon County Board meeting, commissioners were presented with a proposed agreement with MnDOT to reimburse the county for the use of County Road 2 as a detour. The agreement estimated that the detour would have a cost of about $13,781 for road life consumed on County Road 2, over a period of 188 days. Together with detour maintenance costs, the state's estimated payment for the detour came to about $27,562.

Commissioners voted to approve the detour agreement.