Economic Impacts of the I-35W Bridge Collapse
he I-35W Mississippi River bridge provided
direct access to downtown Minneapolis, the
University of Minnesota, area businesses and
north suburban destinations for more than
140,000 vehicles each day. The tragic collapse of the
bridge caused substantial loss of life and injury.
The bridge collapse has also significantly impacted
road-users and the Minnesota economy. Mn/DOT’s
initial study concluded that road-user costs due to the
unavailability of the river crossing would total $400,000
per day. In addition to the road user cost study, further
analysis by DEED and Mn/DOT estimate the economic
impact - or loss to Minnesota’s economy – at about $17
million in 2007 and $43 million in 2008.
The Mn/DOT study focused on valuing how the
unavailability of the river crossing affected road-users
and assigned monetary values to auto travel time,
heavy commercial truck travel time, as well as to
variable operating costs for both – a sound approach
for measuring impacts to road-users.
The impact analysis takes an economic approach to
estimate the impact of the bridge collapse. This
approach focuses on factors that directly affect
Minnesota’s economy. It does not consider the value
of auto travel time since non-business travel (i.e.,
commuting) is not considered an economic
contribution. Moreover, some of the remaining road-
user costs would have been spent on other goods and
services in the state without the bridge collapse
offsetting some of the road-user costs.
Economic Impact Background
Although the economic impacts of the bridge collapse
and subsequent activities are widespread, this report
examines only the economic impacts of the road-user
transportation detours.
The data was collected through a variety of sources
and analyzed with the assistance of REMI Consulting
using their Transight and Policy Insight econometric
models.1 The model analyzes how detours affect costs
and access to goods/services. The mod