Work on Waseca’s Highway 14 bypass will begin, the Highway 169 bridge over the Minnesota River at Le Sueur will be finished and a smattering of other state roads will have their surfaces smoothed.

Construction season began Thursday in Minnesota, as officials from the Minnesota Department of Transportation flew around the state, announcing 441 projects worth $441 million. News releases touted the “accelerated” schedule made possible by $216 million in new borrowing authorized and paid for by the transportation bill, but none of that money is slated for this nine-county region.

The big-ticket project in this region continues to be Highway 14.

The third stage of the eastward four-lane expansion begins July 1. The new Highway 14 will turn due south a few miles west of Waseca and pass just south of the city.

The 10-mile expansion to the Steele County border costs an estimated $60 million and will finish in late 2011 or early the next year, District 7 Engineer Jim Swanson said.

The new Highway 14 may open to traffic when it reaches Highway 13, but it all depends the pace of construction, he said.

The new Highway 169 bridge over the Minnesota River at Le Sueur is expected to open in November.

Another bridge project involves repairing the pier caps on the Highway 14 bridge over the Minnesota River at New Ulm. The pier is the part of the bridge that reaches into the river and its “cap” is the concrete pad the bridge deck rests on.

Workers will chip out the pad’s deteriorated concrete and replace it.

There are six projects devoted to surface repair of the district’s cement and asphalt highways.

The biggest is a $2.3 million effort to repair Highway 60 between Butterfield and St. James.

The others are: Highway 4 from St. James to Highway 30; Highway 13 from Montgomery to Highway 19; Highway 30 in Amboy; Highway 109 in Wells; and Highway 169 from Winnebago to Interstate 90.

Statewide, the biggest news was a decision to replace, rather than repair, the Highway 23 bridge in St. Cloud that was closed last month because of bent gusset plates, The Associated Press reported. The replacement will cost about $35 million, compared with $325,000 for repairs.

But state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan said the deciding factor was that the replacement would coincide with other improvements for Highway 23.