U.S. Bank Stadium

[FISHMANPET]

Also seems weird that the city is giving up the ROW for the bike lane. Making it privately owned and therefore at the whims of the Vikings?

[Rich]

I think the MSFA would own it. Therefore it'd still be public property, no?

[moda253]

"A vehicle lane would be added to busy Sixth Street, which is a heavily used route to reach Interstate 94 and the east metro."

That's disconcerting -- it's already a 3+ lane racetrack that I'm surprised hasn't caused more death and destruction.

Maybe Roads and Cars aren't the WMD's that they are made out to be?

[Nathan]

"A vehicle lane would be added to busy Sixth Street, which is a heavily used route to reach Interstate 94 and the east metro."

That's disconcerting -- it's already a 3+ lane racetrack that I'm surprised hasn't caused more death and destruction.

Maybe Roads and Cars aren't the WMD's that they are made out to be?

Probably not but 6th out there isn't even really a human scale/comfortable for drivers either. It's barren and a bit confusing. To add bikes and incoming traffic it would be reasonable to try to scale it in a decent amount. That would increase safety and visual appeal for all parties.

[moda253]

"A vehicle lane would be added to busy Sixth Street, which is a heavily used route to reach Interstate 94 and the east metro."

That's disconcerting -- it's already a 3+ lane racetrack that I'm surprised hasn't caused more death and destruction.

Maybe Roads and Cars aren't the WMD's that they are made out to be?

Probably not but 6th out there isn't even really a human scale/comfortable for drivers either. It's barren and a bit confusing. To add bikes and incoming traffic it would be reasonable to try to scale it in a decent amount. That would increase safety and visual appeal for all parties.

I have a feeling that by the time it's all said and done that the traffic is going to be softened a bit and the pedestrian experience will improve. In terms of traffic in the city though that downtown freeway plays a big hand at moving vehicles out of the core. Need to fix how it flows onto 94 in order to fix that stretch. If you just cut 6th down you'll just backtrack more vehicles into the core. Or we get electric cattle prodders and force people onto mass transit. Might be cheaper?

[mattaudio]

6th is only nuts during the afternoon rush. It's far overbuilt for 21+ hours a day. Do we want everything along 6th from the backside of Thrivent to the 94 ramp (8 linear blocks) to be an expressway for cars exiting downtown for 2-3 hours per day? Or do we want a framework that supports further development in Downtown East, Elliot Park, etc? Is it really the end of the world if it takes someone an extra 5 minutes to get from their parking ramp exit to I-94 at 4:30 PM? Nobody is saying there will be no cars on 6th, or that Downtown will be cut off from the freeways, or that most of our public ROW will cease to be capacity for motor vehicles. But it's intellectually dishonest to think that anything short of maintaining existing underutilized capacity equates to a war on cars... come on already.

[MNdible]

The most recent Public Works agenda had a link with proposed cross sections for this. I understood that existing lane widths were being reduced, but not certain about that.

[J2K]

It looks like the giant crawler crane will be hoisting one of the queen trusses on the south side of the stadium next. They are starting to place the wood planks on the ground which is forming a path to the south side of the main roof truss. The tarps are off that truss now and they are taking off the tarp supports that were on top. Another day or two, perhaps?
http://www.vikings.com/stadium/new-stadium/webcam.html

[nfschauer]

The earthcam live camera is now up and running on the vikings website. It's very similar to the mortenson one, but a bit north

[Vikeologist]

1st Queens Post Truss has been placed on the South Side of the Stadium!

[Didier]

I changed trains at Downtown East today, and this area is already really different with the stadium going up on one side and the Wells Fargo buildings on another. You can really feel the magnitude of these new buildings and understand how the Yard is going to look.

[moda253]

6th is only nuts during the afternoon rush. It's far overbuilt for 21+ hours a day. Do we want everything along 6th from the backside of Thrivent to the 94 ramp (8 linear blocks) to be an expressway for cars exiting downtown for 2-3 hours per day? Or do we want a framework that supports further development in Downtown East, Elliot Park, etc? Is it really the end of the world if it takes someone an extra 5 minutes to get from their parking ramp exit to I-94 at 4:30 PM? Nobody is saying there will be no cars on 6th, or that Downtown will be cut off from the freeways, or that most of our public ROW will cease to be capacity for motor vehicles. But it's intellectually dishonest to think that anything short of maintaining existing underutilized capacity equates to a war on cars... come on already.

Unless you make traffic flow MUCH better onto 94 you are going to have a LOT more problems than it taking someone 5 extra minutes to get out of their parking ramp. 6th is over built but right now it is a fill up container for people leaving the city as they wait to get on to 94 in it's clusterfuck arrangement right now. If you want to create a more pedestrian friendly 6th street (whihc would be great!) you need to create a better way to get traffic on to 94 or you ar going to have complete gridlock backed up into the core which is going to affect traffic onto other routes.

[Tyler]

Are you saying cars moving faster is better for pedestrians?

[moda253]

Are you saying cars moving faster is better for pedestrians?

No. Not at all. Not sure where you might have gotten that idea. 6th street is a wide pseudo freeway out of downtown and still it is filled up at rush hour because entering 94 is such a cluster. If you do not fix how cars enter 94, limiting the number of lanes on 6th is just going to create more traffic downtown. I think we should fix 6th street to be more pedestrian friendly as the area definitely needs a more pedestrian friendly area, the stadium could do well to have a more pedestrian friendly interaction with it's surroundings. But simply taking lanes out of 6th isn't going to help that it needs to be fixed on down the line. You have one lane from 6th entering onto 94 which is immediately complicated by traffic merging from the Minnehaha ave onramp. Without fixing that bottleneck, and also removing lanes moving in that direction from 6th next to the stadium and further west you are going to create a backup. You can't limit the bandwidth without having a backup. And that backup is likely going to cause issues to other routes.

I'd love to see the stadium's surroundings be much more pedestrian friendly, but it's more complicated than just removing some lanes.


Perhaps if you added more lanes to the 2 lane onramp that is forever long that becomes more of the queuing area than what the 6th street area next to the stadium and into downtown already is. Then you could change the look of 6th street. But I still think you have to find a way to get cars onto 94 more efficiently.

[moda253]

This is what I mean the Red part is 2 lane that pinches down to one lane and the yellow part is three lane (through plus turn lanes) going back into the city. Flip those two stretches making the part in the city 2 lanes (plus turns) and widen the long stretch of two lane to three to hold the cars queing for 94. If possible make entry to 94 two lanes but not sure that's possible. Perhaps one of the lanes enters sooner than the other (like 394 to hwy 100 south having three entrances within a mile)

[FISHMANPET]

The ramp from Cedar onto I94 E already creates its own lane (albeit temporary, it goes away at Riverside), so it could be possible to have the entrance from downtown east to 94 be two lanes, though it might just push the problem onto 94 (which is fine with me actually). Don't bother with 3 lanes to hold the backup, it'd probably just be more optimal to have it be 2 lanes the whole way to 94, reduce merging until you're on the actual freeway.

[mattaudio]

And the ramp from eastbound 6th is nearly always metered, which reduces the problem of merging to one lane eastbound. Furthermore they fixed the Cedar merge via a restripe a year or two ago (Originally, 94 was 3 lanes eastbound. Then, after the bridge collapse, it picked up a fourth lane on the left from 35W. Now, it picks up a fourth lane via 6th Street on the right).

Not sure why it's really a big deal if cars are stacked up through downtown east during rush hour to get to the freeway. That seems preferable to today, which is mostly 6th as a racetrack for 10 blocks... motorists go 40 MPH for 10 blocks just to wait for 2 minutes at the ramp meter. That's beyond dumb, and awful for the street life. If anything, we just need to slow things down even more on eastbound 6th so that it naturally filters traffic heading towards 94.

[moda253]

And the ramp from eastbound 6th is nearly always metered, which reduces the problem of merging to one lane eastbound. Furthermore they fixed the Cedar merge via a restripe a year or two ago (Originally, 94 was 3 lanes eastbound. Then, after the bridge collapse, it picked up a fourth lane on the left from 35W. Now, it picks up a fourth lane via 6th Street on the right).

Not sure why it's really a big deal if cars are stacked up through downtown east during rush hour to get to the freeway. That seems preferable to today, which is mostly 6th as a racetrack for 10 blocks... motorists go 40 MPH for 10 blocks just to wait for 2 minutes at the ramp meter. That's beyond dumb, and awful for the street life. If anything, we just need to slow things down even more on eastbound 6th so that it naturally filters traffic heading towards 94.

They are already stacked up on 6th. You take lanes away and it is going to back them up into the CBD. I'm all for taking lanes away and making it more pedestrian friendly but you have to put the cars that were there waiting in rush hour somewhere. And that somewhere needs to be eastward towards 94 NOT westward further towards downtown.

[mattaudio]

Why? Maybe if people are stuck in slow traffic, they'll do what motorists do during snowstorms etc... depart early or late.

Scarce goods can be provisioned by price or by queue.

Provisioning by price would be congestion pricing, either tolls for freeways or a toll to get in/out of Downtown like London has.
Provisioning by queue involves people having to wait.

That's a fundamental concept of economics.

[Anondson]

Instead of anecdotes, is there any data, numbers, on where where acceptable congestion vs. problematic congestion is happening due to this downtown egress?

I think a better solution than emptying cars out of downtown faster, would be to demolish as many parking facilities in the CBD as is reasonable (hotel/resident ramps stay, commuter ramps gone) and replaced much further out, closer to the exit ramps.