Four Lanes for 34? Get Behind 106

No news lately on the "Four for the Future" effort to get the state to expand Highway 34 to four lanes from Lake Madison to I-29. Google and Yahoo don't yet list the website promised by the group (loyal readers! send me a link if it's out there!). I have noticed some little triangle placards placed by the group around town urging folks to call South Dakota's Congressional delegation and urge their support for the project. I did notice that just a week after my suggestion for a Plan B, trucks were out laying concrete for a new turning lane into the Dakota Ethanol plant (no credit here, I'm sure - just serendipity). But so far, no news of advances in the project.

If the state does have a list of highway projects, and if we're on it, expanding Highway 34 may have just fallen back a notch. Evidently the megalopolitan creep of Sioux Falls into Lincoln County is causing serious traffic tie-ups around the intersection of Highways 106 and 111 north of Tea [Luke Evans, "Tea Traffic Trips Commuters," KELOLand.com, 2007.06.28]. KELO's count of rush-hour traffic Thursday found 75 cars backed up on 106. The report also cites daily traffic counts exceeding 10,000. Uff da -- the Four for the Future folks (2007.07.13 update! they're online, now awkwardly renamed "Highway 34 four [sic] the Future") offer a daily traffic count from 2005 of about 3600 vehicles. Plus, in our various trips to Lake Madison, Sioux Falls, and Minnesota, we've never experienced traffic jams of any sort on 34.

Fortunately for Tea commuters, state senator Sandy Jerstad appears to be among those tangling with Tea's terrible traffic. KELO quotes her as supporting a $4-million expansion of Highway 106. "It's really needed," says Jerstad (in a KELO-sanctioned run-on sentence), "there are a lot of businesses along there, a lot of people coming and going from driveways, a lot of people coming up against one another and a lot of accidents. "

Let's see if Democrat Jerstad can muster any more legislative clout to shake loose highway funds than our own District 8 Representative Russ Olson, one of the Four for the Future committee members, could with the apparently obstinate fellow Republican Governor Rounds. Maybe our man Olson can connect with his fellow rookie legislator Jerstad and put forward some joint legislation to expand both 106 and 34. Maybe bipartisan wheeling and dealing can put some more zoom-zoom in the lives of commuters in Lincoln and Lake counties.