If a man pleads by the side of the road, does it make a sound in Washington?

Elected officials acted out a variation on an old philosophical riddle Monday to issue a familiar refrain: the urgency of improving Highway 14.

“By the time we finish this highway, with the schedule we’re on, we’ll lose hundreds more people and millions in lost revenues,” Congressman Tim Walz said at a North Mankato press conference held scant yards from the traffic rumble of one of the state’s deadliest stretches of highway.

The gathering, which included North Mankato Mayor Gary Zellmer and Waseca Mayor Roy Srp, beat the drum for action on the oft-delayed expansion project — specifically stretches between Waseca and Owatonna and North Mankato and New Ulm.

“This project has to be accelerated and move much faster,” Zellmer said of improvements that originally were scheduled for 2006.

Now, there is no timetable as traffic fatalities continue to mount on the aging, heavily traveled two-lane.

Zellmer’s brother-in-law Joel Dauffenbach and Walz’s former neighbor Charles Ingman were killed on Highway 14, and Srp alluded to a fatality last week just outside Waseca.

In the past five years, more than 25 people have been killed on Highway 14, nearly 75 percent of those occurring along two-lane stretches.

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