Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Transportation announced it will seek a federal INFRA Grant to fund up to $50 million of Highway 14 construction. MnDOT is currently assembling its application for these funds and will submit its application this week. USDOT also announced that another round of BUILD Grant funding—which MnDOT applied for unsuccessfully for Highway 14 last year—is now available. We will update members as plans for this round of grants develop.

While this is good news because we encourage MnDOT to seek every possible opportunity to fund Highway 14, nation-wide programs like INFRA and BUILD are extremely competitive. Many projects must apply multiple times over the course of years before successfully securing funds, if they are successful at all. We will continue to strongly support efforts to secure federal funds, but state funding still remains the best option to fix 14 as soon as possible, and the 2020 legislature needs to receive that message.