Recently, I had an email conversation with John Hotvet, the city's traffic operations engineer. John will have to deal with the Crosstown reconstruction and its attendant nightmares both professionally and personally, since he lives on Nicollet Ave. in the Windom neighborhood right by the construction. I thought a lot of you might be interested in the background and perspective John provides. - David Brauer, list manager, Minneapolis-Issues PS: For Minneapolis-list members, you can subscribe to the egroup (now Yahoogroup) set up to plan for Crosstown reconstruction effects at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saniti PPS: For SANITI group members, you can subscribe to the Minneapolis-list group discussion on city civic affairs at: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/mpls. The forum home page is http://e-democracy.org/mpls John writes: After we talked on Tuesday about the I35W/Crosstown reconstruction and Commissioner Tinklenberg's comments, the Laurie Blake column in the Thursday Star Tribune pretty well summarized the issue. Several years ago MnDOT approached the City about reconstructing this stretch of road. Their original proposal would have addressed some of the complaints about the current design - but at a very high price. Both Minneapolis and Richfield would have lost a substantial number of housing units, as well as commercial property, to accommodate the expanded right of way needs. Needless to say, this was not acceptable to either city because of its impact on livability. Since then MnDOT has been meeting with both cities to devise an acceptable solution for the reconstruction project. As Blake noted in her column, the current proposal was approved by both Minneapolis and Richfield about four years ago. In an earlier paragraph she noted that state law requires MnDOT to get approval for road designs from the cities through which the road passes. MnDOT staff has been meeting with City staff, Metro Transit, Minneapolis Police, Minneapolis, Fire, and others to address concerns about traffic impacts in both cities. Internally, Transportation staff have had an on-going discussion regarding the potential problems and solutions connected with the reconstruction. We know that problems are bound to arise on the City's street network. Unfortunately, we are not able to project well enough where the problems will occur. We want to be proactive in addressing the problems, but with limited resources we don't want to anticipate problems and then find out the problems actually occur at other locations that haven't been addressed. When the major work on the Crosstown starts in 2002 we will be monitoring the traffic situation closely and will be prepared to address problems as they arise. There is also the philosophical issue of how accommodating we should be to traffic that does not follow the official detour route. What changes should be made in parking and turning restrictions to accommodate this traffic, while maintaining neighborhood and commercial area livability? What level of congestion is acceptable before it becomes a problem to adjacent land uses due to idling vehicles, increased air pollution, and increased difficulty getting out onto or across major streets? As the traffic operations engineer, and as a resident of the area that will be impacted, I have been wrestling with this issue for several months both professionally and personally. John Hotvet _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
