This article was recently printed in our local paper, it makes a person sick to KNOW what they are doing, yet others just see dollar signs.




Local NewsNorth Dakota study of expressway to Canada could affect Rapid City
By Jomay Steen, Journal staff | Monday, April 20, 2009

Conversations today at St. Bernard's Parish Center in Belfield, N.D., could lead to boosting Rapid City's economic ties to Canada.

Belfield heralds itself as the "Gateway City to the West" and points out that it is at the Interstate 94-U.S. Highway 85 crossroads. I-94's east-west traffic links Belfield to New York and Seattle, while Highway 85 is the only intercontinental north-south highway, stretching from Canada to Mexico City

Highway 85 passes through the Black Hills and Rapid City and there have been efforts for years to expand it into a four-lane thoroughfare. It's been called the CanAm Highway, but the initiative is now the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway.

The Theodore Roosevelt Express Association will meet at 2 p.m. today at the Belfield parish center. State and federal transportation officials are asking southwestern North Dakota residents for their views on the proposed four-lane between Rapid City and the Canadian border. Potential financial and environmental issues, traffic flow and economic demands are among the issues being studied by the Kadrmas, Lee and Jackson firm of Bismarck. Comments are being taken through May 7.

Pat McElgunn, vice president of governmental affairs for the Rapid City Area Chamber of Commerce, believes Rapid City will become a commercial hub once a northern stretch of the highway project is finished connecting the United States from north to south.

"The real value to this is trucking. They get their efficiency at cruising speeds, not stopping-and-going," he said.

The Theodore Roosevelt Expressway begins at Interstate 90 Exit 61 in Rapid City and follows I-90 until turning at Spearfish to SD Highway 85 and Belle Fourche, going north to the North Dakota line about 90 miles away.

The expressway, or TRE, is the northern third of the Ports-to-Plains Alliance, a nine-state group with a goal of securing the benefits of trade to Canada's oil fields and North America's agricultural industry. A Ports-to-Plains Expressway extends from Texas to Colorado, where it becomes the Heartland Expressway until it connects with the TRE in Rapid City.

Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce manager Teresa Schanzenbach represents the Black Hills area on the Ports-to-Plains caucus. She and other caucus members will travel soon to Washington, D.C., to visit with congressional delegations about the need to complete the expressway system and have funding identified for the next transportation bill that Congress will consider this year, McElgunn said.

In North Dakota, the TRE route includes Bowman, Belfield, Watford City, Williston and finally Culbertson before crossing into eastern Montana's Plentywood and finally Port of Raymond before rolling into Canada.

While the project may sound beneficial, North Dakota Department of Transportation officials said there are no guarantees it ever will happen.

Scott Zainhofsky, DOT planning engineer, said his department had not built an expressway yet in North Dakota. He also pointed out that South Dakota had nothing planned for its portion of the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway.

Bev Hink of Lead, a former city commissioner and mayor, was a leader in the initial movement for the CanAm super highway.

"I was involved in that about two years ago. But we just kind of died out," he said.

Hink noted that the TRE corridor would direct new traffic and truckers through the state with manufacturing materials, pipe and other goods for the northern oil fields and even help the tourism industry with new routes for tour buses.

But it's a project with an escalating price tag tied in red tape.

"It's an awful tough project because every state is different," he said of the varying method for procuring easements, getting funding and buying land for of building roads.

McElgunn said the project may take as long as a quarter of a century to achieve. But its payoffs in transportation and potential industry are well worth the effort, he said.

The four-lane corridor would be an economic boon for the area and make the roads safer as well. "It will be a very ambitious project," McElgunn said.
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