Southbound traffic backs up on the bridge (due to the stoplight at the south end) but not south of there. It's smooth sailing once past Fat Lorenzo's. Traffic doesn't even back up northbound. The backup is to get onto 62 - which is why a flyover and six laning the short stretch over to 35W seems like an excellent trade for massive calming of Cedar. Even in rush hour it is rare to sit through more than one cycle northbound at the Fat Lorenzo's stoplight.Sounds more like you need to do a rebuild of Cedar north of Nokomis like they did on S Lyndale. You see how the traffic backs up on Cedar as it is with the current cloverleaf to west bound 62. I'd rather see traffic backed up south of 58th between 58th and 62 than on 77 itself. I don't see why doing something similar to what they did with South Lyndale would not work on Cedar while keeping the bridges over the lake.
The problem with making Cedar more like Lyndale is the constrained ROW. Lyndale at 54th is 100' from the outsides of the sidewalk. The 4700 block of Cedar (the Carbone's Cluster) is just over 70'. North of 47th is 60', and Hennepin County has balked repeatedly at adding left turn lanes at 42nd/38th (we've tried).