Dear Peter,
As I'm sure you know, Hennepin County sponsored a public meeting last
Tuesday of the Project Advisory Committee that will be making
recommendations to the Hennepin County Board and the Minneapolis City
Council regarding changes to Interstate 35 at the Lake Street interchange.
Some of those changes are past due, moving the 35th Street/36th Street
entrance and exit to 38th Street, to eliminate the dangerous cross weaving
of vehicles entering the system at 31st Street that makes that intersection
so dangerous. But most of the rest are troublesome. The entrance proposed
at Lake Street to go North would create the same kind of cross weaving we've
just eliminated, as would the exit from Southbound 35W onto Lake Street.
Also, most traffic going North would probably be using the freeway for a
short trip to downtown. Do we want the freeway system used for trips of
just one mile or so? Repaving Lake Street will be a welcome change, but
widening the street to 8 lanes doesn't seem to make sense, given that
traffic levels have actually declined on Lake Street in the last ten years.
The most controversial proposal for the modification would be the addition
of a flyover lane that would allow traffic coming from the South and exiting
at Lake Street to fly over Lake Street and dump onto 28th Street. My
understanding is that this is your proposal so that employees and visitors
to Wells Fargo and Allina would not have to see the neighborhood at 31st
Street and 2nd Avenue. My further understanding is that this is a $40+
million avoidance plan. It seems a rather silly boondoggle.
I have written a piece on this for tomorrow's Pulse. I would appreciate it
if you would look it over and comment on it. We plan on reprinting it in
the Phillips/Powderhorn edition of Southside Pride.
Best wishes,
Ed Felien
Big changes for 35W
By Ed Felien
�I promised Wells Fargo we�d give them a flyover lane to 28th Street if they
bought the Honeywell campus,� said Hennepin County Commissioner Peter
McLaughlin, according to Tom McGreevy, the owner and manager of Pearle
Vision on Lake Street. �This was at a meeting last year with Sharon Sayles
Belton and Brian Herron and some neighborhood businessmen,� McGreevy said.
The flyover lane is certainly the most controversial aspect of the 35W
improvements.
The need to improve that section of 35W became apparent when traffic
engineers finally appreciated how dangerous it was to enter 35W at 31st
Street with traffic trying to exit at 35th Street. The cross weaving of
traffic at 55 mph seemed like a catastrophe waiting to happen. So, it was
decided to move the entrance and exit ramps from 35th and 36th Streets to
38th Street. This would eliminate probably the most dangerous section of
Interstate 35 from Duluth to Texas.
There was some grumbling about the changes that would happen at 38th Street,
but, generally, everyone agreed to it.
Then, certain other changes were proposed, and these became increasingly
controversial.
Some businesses had wanted an entrance ramp to go north at Lake Street to go
downtown and to connect to West Bound 94. There were sound reasons there
were no entrance and exit ramps to and from downtown at Lake Street in the
original plan. It was felt that local traffic could feed into downtown.
There were entrance ramps to West 94 at 15th Street and to East 94 and North
35W at Franklin Avenue that effectively bypassed downtown and, thereby, cut
down on congestion. Also, it was considered extremely dangerous to put an
entrance and exit ramp on a curve in the freeway, when much of the traffic
would be wanting to exit.
But some Lake Street businessmen said they felt some of their customers
might be coming from north of downtown and couldn�t easily get off the
freeway system at Lake Street. And major employers in the area wanted the
ramps for easy access for their employees.
The resulting plan may become quite dangerous as cars entering 35W at Lake
Street try to move over two or three lanes in fast moving traffic to exit to
westbound 94 in less than a mile. Also, most people who use the Lake Street
entrance will probably be using it to get downtown. It has, up to now, not
been sound freeway design policy to encourage trips of less than a mile on
the interstate system. Do we want to clog the system with this kind of
short-term traffic?
Trying to exit off 35W onto Lake Street might be just as tricky�on a curve,
going 55 mph, weaving with traffic that has just entered 35W from 94 East.
Some people think this entrance/exit combination should be a sure winner for
the most efficient plan for creating motor vehicle accidents since the 31st
Street/35th Street combination.
The Project Advisory Committee making these proposals has been meeting for
almost four years. It is a Committee heavily weighted in favor of
institutions (like Allina and Honeywell) and businesses. But neighborhood
organizations are also represented and could present a balance to the
outcome. The power began to shift back toward the neighborhoods with the
election of Robert Lilligren. If Brian Herron would have been re-elected,
he would have been a sure vote to support the plans for more concrete. But,
in a surprising conclusion to a year of amazing reverses, Lilligren, who
actually comes from the area most affected by the PAC proposal, was elected
and now represents that area on the City Council.
One other proposal that has been controversial is the widening of Lake
Street from six to eight lanes from Blaisdell to 5th Avenue. This is,
supposedly, to more easily accommodate the new entrance and exit ramps. It
is certainly not to accommodate more traffic on Lake Street, because,
according to Larry Budnik, the City of Minneapolis Traffic Engineer, traffic
on Lake Street is not increasing, �If anything, it�s probably gone down.�
Traffic count at Lake and Nicollet on a normal weekday in 1990 was 26,100.
In 2000 it was 23,000.
But the most controversial proposal of the PAC is the flyover exit from
North Bound 35W to 28th Street. This proposal would build a huge bridge
from Lake Street to 28th Street that would take out six lots of housing in
the West Phillips neighborhood and make the sun set about thirty minutes
faster for the homes that remained. It would produce a huge concrete
barrier two stories tall with traffic zooming along overhead 24 hours a day.
The justification for this $40+ million part of the project, according to
longtime observers, is that Allina did a survey of their employees to see
what they liked and didn�t like about working at Abbott-Northwestern
Hospital. One of the things the employees didn�t like, it seemed, was
getting off 35W at 31st Street and having to wait for a light in a
neighborhood that didn�t seem safe. With a flyover ramp they won�t have to
see the neighborhood where they work. They will be flown in directly to the
mother ship.
The flyover lane has been sold to the neighborhoods as a solution that would
keep traffic out of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, the neighborhood that
would benefit the most from this solution also believes it is a solution
that would make the neighborhood unliveable.
Of course the $40+ million is money dedicated to highway construction, but
if it were possible to use that money to keep that intersection at 31st
Street and 2nd Avenue safe by hiring a police officer to direct traffic
there during morning and evening rush hour, then, we could hire an officer
to stand on that corner for 1600 years.
If the PAC approves the plan, then, it must still be approved by the
Hennepin County Board and the Minneapolis City Council. Approval by the
County Board is assured if Peter McLaughlin can keep his seat in the
upcoming election, but approval by the Minneapolis City Council is not
guaranteed.
The planning process has taken four years to this point, and it may take
another four before construction actually begins.
-end of story-
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