MnROAD Reopens Near Monticello for New Research Projects to Begin

(KNSI) — When driving or riding on roads and freeways around the country, the research on what the roadway is made up of likely happened here in Minnesota.

On Interstate 94 near Monticello, the road splits. That area is known as the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s MnROAD. It’s a three-and-a-half mile stretch of roadway broken up into 39 sections made up of different materials to study how these mixtures perform under heavy traffic and in colder weather conditions.

MnDOT’s MnROAD facility opened in 1994 and has more than 10 miles of pavement test sections, including the mainline section of I-94 used for testing new materials.

Lauren Dao is the communications coordinator for the MnDOT Office of Materials and Road Research and explained the road was redone this year because those 39 sections had completed their lifecycle and some new research was beginning. “We opened it up to the National Road Research Alliance and a few other of our partners to propose new research. And I believe the 39 sections cover different projects from the groundwork, plus asphalt-specific projects and concrete-specific projects. A lot of those sections are all slightly different in order to see what parts of the mixes or how the groundwork can change, how the pavement responds to traffic and the environment.”

Partners from MnDOT and more than 20 universities and industry leaders also helped in the paving work, but there was also a significant amount of work that went into what goes under the road. Hundreds of sensors were placed to record temperature, moisture, the strain on the pavement under traffic and other data to aid researchers during the project. Dao adds with our extreme temperature changes, Minnesota was the perfect place to conduct the research. “In some of the sections, there’s something called geotextiles, which are these other products that actually get added onto the ground before the paving happens. And the goal is to see how well those can help with moisture damage, which could help extend the life of the pavement given how much our ground freezes and thaws.”

Some of the data is available in real-time, and it’s not just researchers in the U.S. examining it. “We have had visitors from Italy and Sweden, and a number of other European countries. A lot of the Scandinavian countries find a lot of value in what MnROAD is able to collect because they have similar environments over there, and up in that Northern European area, so they use that data to help inform them of what they decide to do with their payments as well.”

Dao is a St. Cloud native and had driven over the MnROAD countless times before she ever worked there, and has learned a lot since working at the facility. “I was fascinated that MnDOT has such a desire to make these improvements using empirical research to really help inform the best decision making process for our unique weather, and to really help drivers have the best roads possible, for the most cost effective in the most cost effective ways.”

Learn more about MnROAD by clicking here.

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