Sort of like the way you tell us where to find this web site its public input forum below?Eva also cites Dave's accounting of the Lake Street meeting held by Schiff, Lilligren, and Clark. I would like to hear more about this meeting. Why wasn't this forum posted to Mpls Issues? My wife Corinne Ertz is a member of the Lake Street PAC, I don't remember her getting a notice of this meeting. If these folks are going to criticize Smith Parker's process they better bend over backwards to get the word out on their own events. Holding targeted forums isn't exactly fair either.
There is a web site for the Lake Street project that has a public input and response forum, I was on it last week and counted 19. I suggest folks go to it and take a look.And the address of that web site would be?
I have friends who for years lived on 2nd Ave and were told their houses were going to be taken for a widened 35W -- and then no they weren't, yes they were, no they weren't, yes they were. They finally got fed up, all 4 families in 4 different houses, and moved clear out of Minneapolis. This is over a period of 15 or 20 years, so it's not new news.As far as property takings, could Eva share with the list what property is proposed to be taken along the I35 corridor? Eva's post was the first I've heard of property being taken in the trench on 35. (excluding the Crosstown proposal)
MnDOT highway planners have admitted they need to widen the 3 lanes (not 4, that's only north of 46th) to 5 lanes all the way to 94, and then they'd have to do something about the 94 interchange. A recent article in the Star Tribune about the Crosstown plan contained quotes from MnDOT to this effect, for example.
Now maybe it's possible via some very creative engineering to squeeze ten lanes into the existing trench where there is 6 or 8, but it seems likely that some tax-paying private property is going to disappear to do it. The Crosstown project is going to take some property along 35W as part of its interchange at Diamond Lake Road and widening that stretch to ten lanes, so it certainly seems like MnDOT is not planning on avoiding taking property to widen the highway.
I'm opposed to making 35W any wider than the 8 that it is north of 46th. The so-called Access Project is just one trick among many to slip some of that widening in, to say nothing of its other dubious intentions. In reality, within the boundaries of Minneapolis, there is very little new highway construction that needs doing. The vast majority of the traffic which congests those highways are vehicles passing through with no origination or destination point inside the city limits.
There's no reason for it, unless you want Minneapolis to look like the intersection of the San Diego Freeway, the Century Freeway, West Imperial Highway and South La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles (aerial photo here: http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?t=1&s=10&x=1867&y=18776&z=11&w=2).
Spend all that money planned on the Access Project and otherwise widening 35W to widen the 494 / 694 beltway to contiguous lanes instead. Or maybe build another beltway further out, through Apple Valley, Prior Lake, Chaska, St. Bonifacius, Independence, Rogers, Anoka, Lino Lakes, Lake Elmo, Woodbury, Cottage Grove and Rosemount, since that's where people seem to want to live.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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