There is often good news tucked in there somewhere behind the bad. Such was the case last week with the word out of the Minnesota Department of Transportation that a couple of major construction projects, including one in Eden Prairie, would be delayed. The news reports sounded ominous to those of us who have been looking forward to a stoplight-free Hwy. 169; they told us that the reconstruction of the interchange at 169 and Interstate 494 wouldn't start until at least December 2006 - a one-year delay. The reason: a shortage of federal highway funding. MnDOT calculated that it must save $162.2 million this fiscal year to make up for the shortfall in federal money. So it looked to a couple of big-ticket projects - the $141.7 million 169/494 interchange, along with another $112.2 million project on Interstates 694 and 35E in Vadnais Heights - so it could continue other state road work on schedule. But beyond that is the good news: that other major road projects in the west metro will continue pretty much as planned. - The new Hwy. 212 project, extending what is now known as Hwy. 312 into Chaska and Carver, still is slated to get underway this spring under an expedited schedule announced in 2003 - about five years ahead of the schedule in effect before the Pawlenty administration moved it up. Bids will be let in March 2005 instead of this month as had been planned, according to project manager Jon Chiglo of MnDOT. But the work should still be completed in late 2008. - Work on widening and improving sections of I-494 in Eden Prairie and Minnetonka will go on undeterred. - And virtually all of the smaller projects on the highway funding list will still be on schedule, highway officials said. In the meantime, other major improvements are proceeding on Hwy. 169 - to remove stoplights at two of the four intersections where they slow down traffic in the middle of a 30-mile stretch of otherwise limited-access freeway. The new interchange at Pioneer Trail and 169 is near completion and should open on schedule later this month, according to Wayne Norris, west area engineer for MnDOT's Metro District. And work is already underway on the reconstruction of the Anderson Lakes Parkway intersection with 169. The stoplights there are still scheduled to be removed in the spring when crews go to work building an interchange and a bridge over 169. That project is still scheduled for completion by next fall. These two projects alone will greatly improve the traffic flow along Hwy. 169. And they aren't coming cheap: Together they price out at more than $20 million. Another point to keep in mind - while the start of the 169/494 interchange work is now delayed about a year, until at least December 2006, it is still well ahead of the schedule that had been in effect before the Pawlenty administration expedited it in 2003. The Hwy. 169 interchanges at Pioneer Trail and Anderson Lakes Parkway are both being completed at least four years ahead of their original schedule. And the 169/494 project wasn't even in MnDOT's 10-year plan before 2003, so its current target date for completion, sometime in 2009, is still well ahead of the old schedule. So there is some good news if you look for it. And another thing: While the planning efforts of those currently in charge of highway construction are being questioned, let's not forget why they're faced with spending more than $160 million on the Hwy. 169 interchanges to begin with. The work is necessary because of decisions made in the 1980s and 1990s to put those stoplighted intersections there in the first place. By the time construction of Hwy. 169 was set to begin in the mid-1990s, Hennepin County officials who were managing the project knew the stoplights were a bad idea, and even built 169 so limited-access interchanges eventually could be added, according to accounts from officials such as Gene Dietz, Eden Prairie's public works director. By then, even the main opponents of a freeway without lights, Eden Prairie officials, had withdrawn their objections. There was no good reason to build the highway as it was constructed except bureaucratic inertia, according to the accounts of Dietz and others. Federal money for the project was in the pipeline, and because of the way such work is funded, and the time-consuming environmental studies required for such a project to be redesigned, local officials were concerned they'd lose the federal money if they tried to go back and redesign those intersections, Dietz and others have said. So they proceeded with the project, knowing that someday those intersections would have to be replaced with interchanges, and at a hefty price - many times what it might have cost to build it right in the first place. . Sam Barnes is at sbarnes@startribune.com.