The Minnesota Department of Transportation hosted a public house Tuesday to update the public on the Highway 14 expansion project.

The project will expand 12.5 miles of Highway 14 between Owatonna and Dodge Center from two lanes to four lanes. The new route will be located south of the current two-lane portion and would make Highway 14 a four-lane highway from Rochester west to Mankato.

Joel Earls lives around the corner from Highway 14. He calls the highway dangerous after witnessing a bad wreck last month.

"We just had a semi take out a family right in front of my friend’s house," said Earls.

Since he travels this road five times a week he is upbeat about the planned improvements.
MnDOT spokesman Mike Dougherty says the expansion is focused on safety.

" It's a better safer link for commerce. When you control the access of how people get on that's safer. There will be two lanes going east and two lanes going west," said Dougherty.

Widening the stretch will keep traffic flowing and free of bottlenecks.

"You do find that people are coming from a divided highway where it’s 65 and they are able to pass because there are four lanes. Sometimes they get to that two lanes and that does bottle up traffic,” said

Construction will start in August of this year.