|
Thanks Dore Mead for giving some solid context
to the I-35W Access Project and focusing on solutions that benefit all
neighborhoods.
I represent the Kingfield neighborhood on the
PAC and, as many know, I, and the Kingfield Neighborhood Association, have
opposed the project, primarily because the project disproportionately impacts
the livability of a large group of residents along and near 38th
Street.
I recognize the one possible benefit of the
project to the Kingfield neighborhood - the potential reduction in overall ramp
traffic at the current 35th/36th Street ramp (or new 38th Street ramp) due to
new ramps at Lake Street. An estimated 25 percent of the current 35th/36th
ramp traffic will use Lake Street ramps, no longer needing to get off at
35th/36th Streets to access Lake Street or travel south to 35th/36th Streets to
access the freeway. This is important, especially given the volume of truck
traffic that unnecessarily goes through neighborhood streets because of lack of
full access at Lake Street. For this reason, if the project were only about
adding ramps on the north side of Lake Street, without the flyover and without
relocating the 35th/36th Street ramps, Kingfield may support full access at Lake
Street. In theory, full access may make sense.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE PROPOSED ACCESS PROJECT
PROPOSAL
However, the plan is not this just adding new ramps on the
north side of Lake Street to create full access. It's much more and I have come to oppose the project for several
reasons:
1) The purported benefits of improved access and related
economic revitalization are completely unknown and unquantified. The
project has not studied how much access would actually be improved at Lake
Street or 38th Street, nor has it studied the benefits business would derive
from this improved access. There is merely speculation that better ramps
will result in better access, which will, in turn, result in more
business. We have no information about these benefits and no cost-benefit
analysis has been done, nor will be done. We have no way to show that
there is $153 million worth of benefits in this project. I believe that
the improvements in access are marginal (meaning that traffic can already access
Lake Street and the freeway, just not as conveniently as they might wish) and,
the project is not worth a public investment of a whopping $153 million.
The goal of economic revitalization (at Lake Street and 38th
Street) is unproven and fallacious as most of the thriving economic hubs in
Minneapolis and St. Paul are nowhere near freeway interchanges. Look at
Uptown, Linden Hills, Victoria Crossing, 50th and France, among others.
Lake Street may undergo a needed transformation if Nicollet
Avenue is opened, but this revitalization is not ramp dependent (not even a box
retailer like K-Mart at Lake Street needs ramps to thrive). Moreover, Lake
Street (and Eat Street) are already revitalizing without any help from ramps
whatsoever.
2) The need to relocate the 35th/36th Street
ramps to 38th Street has not been substantiated in terms of safety. Clearly the
distance between the 31st and 35th Street ramps is inadequate, but this stretch
of the freeway is not a high accident area as drivers exercise caution at the
interchange area.
An interchange should have logically been
located at 38th Street originally, but they were not, and to retrofit them now
creates undue traffic impacts at a currently interchange-free area.
Proponents claim that 38th Street is more business oriented and that more
traffic would bring more business. However, as I state above, more traffic
brought by an interchange has not proven to improve neighborhood businesses.
Additionally, it is not true on the west side of the freeway that 38th Street
has more businesses than 36th Street. On 38th Street, business nodes exist at
38th and Nicollet and Grand Avenues. There is also a school and church at 38th
and Pillsbury Avenue - not exactly magnets for ramp traffic. On 36th
Street, there are business nodes at 36th and Nicollet, Grand, Lyndale, and
Byrant Avenues.
Presently, the 35th/36th Street system serves to distribute
ramp traffic both east and west, without jogging through residential streets:
35th Street stretches east to the river, and 36th Street extends to Lake Calhoun
While 38th Street also extends east to the river, it deadends at the cemetery on
the west, creating a major problem for Linden Hills traffic, which must jog
between 36th and 38th Streets on (mostly) residential streets.
Additionally, rather than helping businesses at
38th and Nicollet, it may hurt them as the project will take away (on both 38th
Street and Nicollet Avenue) the very limited parking currently at this
intersection. 3) The Access project caved into MN/DOT's demands to
accommodate future HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes). This act shows that the
interests on the PAC want to see the Access Project happen at any cost. As I
have stated several times, the agreement by the PAC to accommodate MN/DOTs
demands was a big mistake because:
4) The project demolishes affordable housing to
make room for more cars. This is an unreasonable trade off when we have too many
cars and too few affordable homes in the city and, there is no plan nor policy
to replace the lost housing.
5) While the project proposes to fix the merging problem between the 31st and 35th Street ramps, it creates
new merging problems to access the proposed Lake Street ramps. Without a
complex and costly "rebraiding" of freeway lanes to eliminate the
weave problems, MN/DOT may restrict the use of the new Lake Street ramps in the
future, completely undermining the primary project goal of full access at Lake
Street, and requiring traffic to alternatively use the new 38th Street
ramps. A permanent fix such as realigning the freeway lanes may ultimately
be proposed, but this fix is not included in the current $153 million
budget.
6) The Access Project IS all about cars. There are no serious
transit goals as part of the project solution. This is critical because
the City has a priority to focus on transit, not road construction, as tools of
improving city economic development and community livability. Had the
project been facilitated with no preconceived notion of the solution, but rather
with a set of questions such as:
Then perhaps new ramps may not have been the solution. Perhaps
the solutions would have included more transit options, economic revitalization
plans and city beautification plans.
I believe that some neighborhoods are supportive of the Access
Project plan to derive the benefits in the mitigation and enhancement plans, but
they have not been presented with any alternatives to rally around.
A FAULTY COMMUNITY PROCESS
My concerns, and others expressed by opponents of the project,
stem in part from a faulty and biased PAC process. As a community
facilitator, I am very familiar with the accusation of bad process by those who
do not get what they want out of the process. But in this case, I believe
the process to be faulty and share the concern that many have articulated about
the process. I do not, however, blame Tom Johnson personally for the problems of
bad process. Instead, I point a finger at the government bodies
responsible for hiring a firm like Smith Parker, who was contracted to advance
the agenda and pre-existing solution (i.e. new ramps) of the Phillips
Partnership, and the subsequent formation of the PAC with weighted business
interests and inconsistent neighborhood and elected official
representation. The public entities didn't have the foresight to see the
conflict of interest at hand. While I believe that project staff made
great effort to get community input on this project, the process was not neutral
and could not act on behalf of the neighborhoods and businesses jointly in a
fair manner. The stage was set for new ramps and the PAC really merely helped
decide the details.
This was a serious strategic error because an infrastructure
project like this is a thoroughly public one, not a private one. The community
process should have been convened by a government entity, with balanced and fair
representation on any community advisory body and led by a neutral community
facilitator.
The current neighborhood representatives perhaps could have
asked that the process be curtailed and begun anew, but this was not easy as the
process was endorsed and supported by the public entities.
Perhaps it is now time for a different process to take over,
to determine the final phase design of the project if it moves forward or to
consider other options if it does not.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Starting over isn't possible, so where do we go from
here?
First, we need to work with our elected officials to get a
project that is workable for all neighborhoods. The project will move forward
for City, County and MN/DOT approval over the next several months. Gail
Dorfman clarified at the Saturday open house, that the Preferred Build Option is
not a done deal. It is only a recommendation and that the public bodies can do
with it what they want - modify the plans, add conditions, vote them down.
Hence, there's still lots of work for those of us who want to
see a different outcome here. We need to make sure the elected bodies hear
voices opposed to the current plan and what we want instead.
Kingfield advocates leaving the existing infrastructure as is
(i.e. no new ramps) and funneling the designated mitigation and enhancement
funds to improve the existing Lake Street and 35th/36th Street ramp areas.
Some very wonderful mitigation and enhancement plans have been
developed by the project consultants (included the proposed
roundabout design for the 38th Street interchange) as a part of the PAC
process and could be modified to mitigate the existing interchange system.
This work need not be lost if the project is not approved or funded as currently
recommended.
Contrary to staff claims that this project is all or nothing
(meaning no ramps, no mitigation), the reality may be that full funding never
becomes available (given the tenuous nature of the likelihood of a gas tax
increase by upcoming legislatures) and/or the communities and public entities
may not approve the project as currently proposed. Hence, we can scale back,
consider other options and, potentially, funnel monies accordingly.
Conceding that some sort of ramp proposal may move forward as
a part of a scaled-back solution, I would advocate for north-bound entrance and southbound exit ramps only at Lake Street and
press elected bodies to ensure the following conditions.
There may be other, neighborhood specific
desires and conditions that should be added to this list. I want to make
sure that all neighborhoods benefit from this project if it happens in any
form. Next, I propose that the PAC process be
concluded now and that a new community process be established to either guide
the detailed design phase of the project OR, in the case of a No Build (or
different build) option, begin a new process to determine how to best move
people in and around the Lake Street area and to revitalize and beautify the
surrounding neighborhoods.
Submitted by Jeanne Massey
Kingfield representative to
the I-35 Access Project
|
