Q: Hi, I am not from Mankato but I was wondering if Highway 22 north of Mankato will EVER!!!!! be open in the summer again? This year there are so many other detours/road closings I thought I would use it to get around some of them. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was STILL!!!! closed after at least 20 or 30 years of construction. Maybe the DOT should just close it permanently because it seems not to be needed. Thanks.
A: The suggestion that Highway 22 north of Mankato has been closed for two or three decades is a SLIGHT!!!! exaggeration, but for an out-of-towner it might seem like it’s been shut down much longer than actually has been the case.
Sure, the current two-year $37 million project first closed the road just 17 months ago in April 2025, and it reopened during the winter months before the barricades went up again this spring.
That doesn’t account, however, for the fact that the highway was also closed in 2024 when a roundabout was added at the intersection with Augusta Drive on Mankato’s north side. And in 2023, Highway 22 was detoured on St. Peter’s south side for five months to allow for some major intersection improvements at Highway 169. In each of those cases, the closed section was much smaller and the detour much shorter than what has faced drivers this year and last.
Of course, other segments of Highway 22 near Mankato were closed in the past dozen years, too. The highway from Mapleton to Mankato was reconstructed in 2017-18. Just three years ago, Highway 22 was shut down between Mapleton and Wells. And within Mankato in 2014, the highway was shuttered to allow construction of roundabouts at Madison Avenue and Adams Street.
While that is a lot of construction on a 49-mile stretch of highway, Ask Us Guy feels obligated to point out the obvious in defense of MnDOT. The projects were disruptive, but the only alternative is to let roads deteriorate forever, which doesn’t seem like a good strategy. Also, in every instance the highway reopened with better pavement and safer designs.
Now, on to the question of whether “Highway 22 north of Mankato will EVER!!!!! be open in the summer again?”
The answer, barring unforeseen catastrophes, is that it will be open in the summer of 2027. In fact, as The Free Press reported earlier this month, it will be open before winter arrives.
MnDOT’s construction supervisor for Highway 22 said he expects the detour to be removed and traffic to flow on the new-and-improved roadway by Nov. 1.
That’s the same timeframe the engineering specialist gave for the reopening of the Veterans Memorial Bridge between Mankato and North Mankato.
For a couple of reasons, Ask Us Guy won’t be surprised if the projects wrap up a few days sooner that.
First, Mankato City Manager Susan Arntz recently provided an optimistic update to the City Council on the Vets Bridge project, which began in early February.
“Ames Construction has done an exceptional job of keeping to timelines,” Arntz said. “They’re ahead of schedule.”
She also said that the installation of special commemorative medallions on the bridge railings, designed to honor military veterans, will be going up by “mid- to late-October.” That work represents one of the final elements of the project before the bridge reopens.
One other factor makes Ask Us Guy wonder if that Nov. 1 date might be beat by multiple days, maybe even a week. It’s an engineering phenomena that he calls the “Montgomery Scott Effect.”
The chief engineer on the USS Enterprise, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott always overestimated how long repairs would take. When Captain Kirk implored him to get the work done faster, the engineer would counter in his Scottish brogue: “I cannae change the laws of physics.”
Kirk eventually called him out on the tactic after Scott once estimated it would take eight weeks to retrofit the starship for a return to space, only to concede he could do it in two.
“Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?” Kirk asks.
“Certainly, sir,” Scott replies. “How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?”
While MnDOT’s Highway 22 project supervisor “cannae change the laws of physics,” Ask Us Guy expects him to beat that Nov. 1 date, barring a stretch of really bad weather or possibly some sabotage by undercover Klingon operatives.
In fact, Ask Us Guy is going to go out on a limb and predict that folks will be driving on Highway 22 and across the Vets Bridge one month from today. That means the frustrated reader and other Mankato-area drivers will be able to give their kids a special Halloween treat: As an alternative to trick-or-treating, there can be a family road trip across the bridge, up Highway 22 and over all of the other newly completed pieces of MnDOT infrastructure.
And when driving Highway 22, they’ll find the section between Mankato and St. Peter much less spooky than in the past, with its new roundabout near Kasota, a much safer intersection at North Riverfront Drive/Blue Earth County Road 57, new passing lanes, dedicated left turn lanes, lengthier right turn lanes, improved lighting and more.
Contact Ask Us at The Free Press, 418 S. Second St., Mankato, MN 56001. Call Mark Fischenich at 344-6321 or email your question to mfischenich@mankatofreepress.com; put Ask Us in the subject line.