This report stemmed from a visit to the MnDOT headquarters in St. Paul, MN, and the then-newly-released 2007-08 Minnesota state highway map.  This was posted on April 24, 2007.

During a MnDOT visit this morning, found out that the new 2007-08 MN state map is now out. It was just released a week ago according to the guy in Maps & Manual Sales. Alas, the online version has not yet been updated.

As with the 05-06 map, this one does not include a list of Best Western locations within the state (this happened for about 10 years in the late '90s into the first part of this decade), and is a joint production with the Department of Administration and Explore Minnesota Tourism. The front cover is an autumn-time photo of Ramsey Falls near Redwood Falls.

A few notes/observations:

- The backside of the map has a quick listing, description, and shield display of the 22 Scenic Byways in the state. 7 of them are also National Scenic Byways.

- Populations listed are the 2005 population estimates from the State Demographer.

- A few recent turnbacks: MN 224, MN 268, and MN 104 south of Sunburg.

- The extension of the US 14 4-lane around and east of Janesville is shown. It shows the interchange at CSAH 3 south of Janesville, but not the half-interchange at CR 60 west of Janesville.

- The new interchange on US 52 at CSAH 12 south of Oronoco is shown.

- An extension of the 4-lane along US 169 between Coleraine and Taconite is shown...this is presently under construction.

- The map state map shows a new interchange on US 71/MN 23 around Willmar as a partial interchange. The Willmar city inset properly shows the full interchange.

- MN 194 still shown in Duluth.

- A few city insets have been expanded: St. Cloud inset was expanded north to include most of Sartell. The Mankato inset expanded slightly north. Rochester inset was expanded in all four directions and includes the two new interchanges on US 63 south of US 52. Lastly, the Twin Cities inset was expanded west to include all of Hennepin County and also now just barely reaches Belle Plaine and Big Lake.

- Two new city insets: Buffalo and Alexandria.

On the Twin Cities Inset:

- The new interchanges on MN 101 in Otsego are shown as "under construction". The CSAH 39 SPUI is improperly shown, though.

- In Maple Grove, the realignment of CSAH 81 (to accommodate MN 610), plus the extension of CSAH 130 to CSAH 81, is shown.

- In the southwestern metro, the future US 212 freeway alignment is shown, as is the now-completed extension to Dell Rd.

- The US 169 interchange at MN 25 in Belle Plaine is shown.

- CSAH 47 is now shown bridging over US 52 in Hampton.

- MN 101 still shown in Chanhassan.

Lastly, I spoke with one of the MnDOT cartographers who works on the state highway map, about why MnDOT doesn't delineate between freeway, expressway, and regular 4-lane segments. The basic answer is twofold: A) based on State Fair comment cards and E-mails, there have been very few requests for such delineation, and B) unlike our cheesehead neighbors to the east, Minnesota has relatively few segments of non-Interstate (outside the Twin Cities anyway) that are freeway or expressway-grade (expressway defined here in the normal engineering terms: with partial access control and no private access). While a collective E-mail campaign could take care of "A", "B" is a hard one to beat.

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(C) 2007, Adam Froehlig