Drivers headed from Eau Claire to the Iron Range of Minnesota will be happy to learn the road is now open — specifically the stretch of U.S. Route 53 where it joins Interstate 535 crossing from Superior to Duluth.
Since 2021, it’s been marked by detours and diversions with the rebuild of the Interstate 35 and I-535/U.S. 53 interchange, long nicknamed — rather derisively — as the “Can of Worms.”
Now, that can has been emptied. The roadways straightened out with the full opening of the interchange in late October — though one quirky vestige remains: a stoplight on the exit ramps between the two interstates.
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“We still have a stoplight, but it is a much more conventional design, using today’s standards,” said Pete Marthaler, a major project construction manager for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. “We’re not forcing drivers to meet at right angles like they used to.”
Marthaler spoke about the improvements, which will offer motorists smooth sailing until the Blatnik Bridge reconstruction begins in 2027, with WPR’s Robin Washington on WPR’s “Morning Edition.”
The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Robin Washington: I remember speaking with one of your colleagues before the construction, saying it would have been possible to eliminate the stoplight but would have entailed a third-level ramp going over the entire interchange.
Pete Marthaler: That’s correct. It would have added another layer of flyovers in order to take that traffic from northbound Interstate 35 up and over Route 53, and then merging it back into 53.
It would have been much more dramatic and we would have had to redesign the whole interchange in order to accomplish that.
RW: You mentioned no longer having sharp right angles. Some of those longer curves were actually designed to accommodate the windmill blades that are transported from the Port of Duluth-Superior to I-35.
PM: At the time that we were designing the project in 2018, we reached out to the Port Authority and asked them what their longest wind blades were. We’ve since learned that they’ve gotten even longer. By and large, they’ll be able to get onto the freeway system as opposed to navigating the local roads that some of them had to before.
RW: I understand we’ll also no longer have a series of left-hand exits.
PM: That’s correct. There was a left-hand exit for southbound I-35 traffic to go onto southbound I-535, and northbound I-35 traffic to exit on the left-hand side to go up U.S. 53. That’s no longer the case.
RW: Are there any detours still remaining, or are we wide open for now?
PM: There are not. This summer, we had a number of adjacent projects, both to the north and south of us, that were either planned or unplanned. One was an unplanned emergency project that definitely added more traffic congestion on I-35 and 53. But those are all since completed as well.
RW: How long can we enjoy this before we start detouring again for the Blatnik Bridge rebuild?
PM: Today, we are actually releasing the response for proposals to our pre-selected design-build firms that will be doing their planning work between now and June of next year. We’ll open bids for the Blatnik in June and maybe have construction for our traffic mitigation ready to go by the end of 2026. The earliest that we perceive that the contractor would be able to start demolition would be about February of 2027.
RW: So we’re going to have a solid year of no detours?
PM: Yeah, definitely for the remainder this year and all next year.
If you have an idea about something in northern Wisconsin you think we should talk about on Morning Edition, send it to us at northern@wpr.org.
