In a word, No.Do Minneapolis people support this latest design? Although Strib story mentions a task force, it doesn't quote anyone from the city.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4198539.html
David Brauer
List manager
It's an even greater excess of concrete, complexity and taking of Minneapolis and Richfield private property to make the drive for commuters from Burnsville to Roseville easier. $182+ million for less than 2 miles of roadway? (I've got $20 that says it runs over $220 million before it's done. Any takers? :-)
And it displays in a spectacular fashion MnDOT's inability to think outside of the box and their seemingly congential fear of building a tunnel or double-decked arrangement of lanes -- something highway builders do everywhere else in the world.
Give me a large to-scale drawing of the existing roadways, right of way and private property lines, some traffic volume data, and I'll draw you a better design that will cost less in the long run.
I liked the previous design better, despite its flaws. The single lane from east-bound Crosstown to north-bound 35W was not one of those flaws, despite all the whining. All that traffic is going to have to merge into fewer lanes anyway, since 35W northbound is not 5-lanes wide from 62 to downtown, and won't be for a long time (hopefully never). Mind you that in the previous design, where major portions would be closed for many months, I would personally suffer because without a doubt the large amount of traffic which uses my street to by-pass 62 and street lights on county highways 21 and 32 would greatly increase. Still, I'd suffer through that just to have the suburban commuters suffer through months of "lowered expectations."
The previous design may not have increased capacity, but it increased safety which is about all I think we can ask for. If people want more highway capacity, they can build it in their neighborhoods, not mine. 99.9% of the Crosstown commons traffic is not destined for or originating in southwest Minneapolis and northern Richfield. 95% of that traffic is not destined for or coming from Minneapolis at all. When one is driving north on 35W and comes to the downtown and 94 exits, the vast majority of the traffic takes 94 or stays on 35W -- it is not going to Minneapolis, even during morning rush hour.
The point being -- don't let anyone ever try to sell you on the idea that a new lane or ramp here or there on the Crosstown, 35W or 94 is for the benefit of Minneapolis, or will even benefit Minneapolis. It's virtually all for the benefit of suburban commuters.
I hate the congestion on the Crosstown when I want to go someplace. I live with it and work around it. Build more lanes and more traffic will come. So it has always been and will always be.
How to improve the current design (beyond letting me dictate the entire thing, of course):
The southbound 35W / westbound 62 exit to Lyndale Avenue should be removed completely. Such a connection really should be made to county 121, the "Lyndale Connector," if at all. This almost solves the problem of traffic coming onto the southbound lanes at Diamond Lake Road having to merge through exiting traffic, high-speed traffic headed for west-bound 62 and worse, having to merge 3 lanes to the left to get to the LEFT exit for 35W southbound. If you've ever fought your way through the west-bound 94 exit from 35W south-bound with a huge string of slow moving cars merging on from 4th Street (I believe it is), as well as the people trying to exist at 11th Avenue, you know what I mean when I say these kinds of ramp arrangements aren't worth a plug nickel.
Likewise the on-ramp from 60th Street to northbound 35W. Just get rid of it completely. It just serves to add more merge congestion and the few people who use it can easily use Portland or Diamond Lake Road. You could probably get rid of the southbound exit to 60th Street as well, although it won't provide much in the way of benefits in the new design.
Return to the old design of 2 eastbound Crosstown lanes merging to one lane "around the bend" to northbound 35W. The new design has 2 lanes having to abruptly merge with 3 (three) 35W lanes (i.e. 5 lanes wide to 3 lanes wide) right before making the sharp left turn on 35W. That's a recipe for massive congestion and lots of accidents. I'm astonished MnDOT thinks this will even work.
This new design will take 18 more properties, in addition to however many the old plan was going to take, which unfortunately the STrib article does not state. I vaguely recall a number around 33 properties.
The current article also talks about the bottlenecks being simply moved, because once the interchange is done, the roadways will not have enough lanes outside of it. The plan is to increase 35W to 5 lanes all the way to downtown to accomodate the traffic, but that is not going to happen until sometime after the 35W/Crosstown interchange is done. And that plan will not address the big jam thus moved north to the 35W/94 interchange as a result because there are no plans even in the works to widen that mess.
Do we even want 35W widened? If they build those 5 lanes, you know the traffic backup is going to spill into city streets all over south and downtown Minneapolis -- MnDOT even says that will happen. What kind of lunacy is that? Move the congestion off the highways in Edina, Richfield and south Minneapolis to the streets of Minneapolis just south of downtown?
Chris Johnson Fulton
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