Street, Road and Highway Projects

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
Tcmetro
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Re: Street, Road, and Highway Projects

Postby Tcmetro » April 18th, 2013, 3:03 pm

Speaking of the area, MnDot recently held a meeting discussing opportunities for Hwy 13 between 169 and 35W. The options ranged from reducing the number of lights and improving intersections to the conversion of 13 to a freeway with interchanges at Dakota, Chowen, and CR 5. No mention of improving the cloverleaf at 35W. Additionally, it didn't seem like they were interested in introducing an interchange at Nicollet, despite the traffic issues there. Anyways, sounds like a nice project, but will probably kill the already struggling downtown area of Savage. Who knows, maybe the remaining strip malls will be replaced by yet another senior housing project.

beykite
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Re: Street, Road, and Highway Projects

Postby beykite » April 18th, 2013, 3:07 pm

There really does need to be a East-West freeway connecter on that side of the river to hopefully alleviate some of the traffic on 494. 13 from 169-35W seems like the best option considering its much closer to the core then any of the other proposals, most of wich put the connecter south of CR 42.

mattaudio
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Re: Street, Road, and Highway Projects

Postby mattaudio » April 18th, 2013, 3:13 pm

Interesting trivia: At one point, Scott County 21 was proposed as a freeway from 169/18 in Shakopee to 185th/35W in Lakeville.

Tcmetro
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Re: Street, Road, and Highway Projects

Postby Tcmetro » April 18th, 2013, 3:33 pm

Scott County has moved their sights onto a new freeway from 169 in Shakopee down to the county line. Like we need another 30 miles of exurbs with no job centers in a 30 minute drive. :roll:

As for the Hwy. 13 freeway proposal, it's actually a decent idea because the land is mainly industrial, truck traffic is heavy, and IIRC, there is some 70,000 vehicles traveling on the road each day.

Mdcastle
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Re: Street, Road, and Highway Projects

Postby Mdcastle » April 19th, 2013, 8:06 am

Scott County has butted heads with the met council before about transportation priorities so I'm now surprised they wanted a freeway, as for US 169 I'm thinking the long term idea might be for a HOT shoulder during peak periods, like I-35W approaching downtown. I don't agree with stealing safety shoulders, but that may be the idea.

As for MN 13, it seems stupid to keep adding signals and taking away signals simultaneously. They added one at Quentin last year and took one away at County 101. Now they plan take away one at County 5 and add one at Dakota. I know the area north of Savage is kind of a no-mans land with railroad and industrial uses, but it would be nice to depress MN 13 and the railroad, and then extend the downtown plaza across and towards the river.

Improving the I-35W and 13 interchange is actually being / been studied and is linked to a totally different project to reconfigure the I-35W interchanges with Black Dog Road, Cliff Road, MN 13, and Burnsville Parkway that also includes MN 13 and Nicollet. All plans have a high speed ramps for the I-35W north to MN 13 west movements, but the other options range from downgrading the cloverleaf to a split diamond with Burnsville Parkway to a high powered system interchange with C/D roads and an interchange at Nicollet. I'm not sure if Burnsville is clear what they want with Nicollet and 13. My opinion this is similar the situation in North St. Paul, where they sunk the traffic down and built interchanges and overpasses to make it easier for both local traffic and pedestrians to get across.

Tcmetro
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Tcmetro » October 16th, 2013, 11:46 am

So Mn/Dot released a summary of their recent Hwy 13 study.

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projec ... update.pdf

A few suggestions from that:

- Double left from Nicollet to Hwy 13, double lane entrance from WB 13 to NB 35W
- Near term reconstruction of the Washburn intersection, consoliate into Chowen in the long term
- Long term reconstruction of the Chowen intersection. Control type TBD. Elimination of the Lynn Ave signal. New connector road from Chowen/13 to Glendale/McColl roundabout.
- Near term closure of Yosemite Ave access.
- Long term reconstruction of Dakota Ave intersection, control type TBD.
- Extensions of frontage roads to mitigate access closures.

mattaudio
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby mattaudio » October 16th, 2013, 12:20 pm

Sort of weird that they label a "Kenwood Trail extension" to 35W for CSAH 5. I don't think the Burnsville stretch of this road has ever been labeled Kenwood Trail.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby RailBaronYarr » October 16th, 2013, 1:49 pm

Also, how about continuing to make the Burnsville Transit Station more and more pedestrian hostile and less accessible, even as the area just south of Hwy 13 along Nicollet is becoming a somewhat dense and walkable area?

All these slated improvements in addition to the 13/101 overpass recently completed and the 13/5 freeway interchange are just going to continue supporting auto-focused development in Savage, Shakopee, and beyond. It's ridiculous.

mulad
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby mulad » October 16th, 2013, 2:51 pm

Hmm. I wonder how many parcels/acres will be taken by the Washburn/Chowen intersection construction. If we can't take any buildings for SWLRT, we shouldn't allow MnDOT to take any here.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby RailBaronYarr » October 16th, 2013, 5:25 pm

^To that point, how many were taken for the 62/35W Commons re-do? Or any other recent road construction project? We hear/read stories all the time how businesses along University got the shaft during construction (that would have happened as University was re-done anyway), but no one does the sad story on businesses who lose access during 2 year long highway re-dos...

mulad
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby mulad » October 16th, 2013, 5:38 pm

I dunno, I saw sob stories published for the 35W/62 project as well as the MN-36 project up in North St Paul a few years earlier. But only about one or two articles for each. Certainly nothing on the scale of what we saw with the Green Line, where the articles popped up almost every week.

Mdcastle
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Mdcastle » October 16th, 2013, 8:26 pm

It's too bad they can't just convert it into a freeway west of Nicollet, but taking out the County 5 light at least is going to help things. I drive on it several times a week and as of now try to avoid it during rush hour if at all possible. East of Nicollet the highway design is probably fine to handle the traffic, but it would be nice to sink part of it down and a pedestrian overpass or even a short cap to make it easier to get from the transit station to the cute downtown area that's been built.

twincitizen
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby twincitizen » October 21st, 2013, 1:57 pm

The Saint Anthony Parkway Bridge (over Northtown Yard) project has a nice website. Unusually nice and modern for an infrastructure project, I might add.

http://stapbridge.com/

mulad
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby mulad » October 22nd, 2013, 11:16 am

The diverging diamond interchange at MN-15 and Stearns County Road 120 on the border between St. Cloud and Sartell opened on October 17th. They're calling it the first DDI in the state, though the Elk Run interchange has been 3/4ths open for a while (not sure about that last 1/4th).

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20131017 ... y-Road-120
http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1042 ... n-St-Cloud

In the western part of Minnesota, All of US-75, most of US-59, and a segment of MN-7 between the two (and twinned with US-59 southwest of there) is having speed limits raised from 55 mph to 60 mph.

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/13/10/20speed.html
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/13/10/60mphmap.pdf

Mdcastle
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Mdcastle » October 29th, 2013, 8:02 am

MN 15 is a good example of how not do to a highway project, but at least they took one small step to fix it, and this was an appropriate place for a DDI. Since it's through traffic that interferes with each other they work best when most of the traffic on the cross street is entering or leaving the main street.

Tcmetro
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Tcmetro » October 29th, 2013, 8:39 am

Speaking of DDI's the 34th Av/494 interchange recently opened up. It's a lot more efficient than the old interchange.

mulad
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby mulad » October 29th, 2013, 3:18 pm

I went up to the one in St. Cloud/Sartell on Sunday to get some GPS coordinates for mapping. I saw a few folks who were still figuring it out -- one person stopped at a point in between the west-side crossover and the pedestrian crossing, and I recall seeing a couple of others drifting between lanes because they weren't quite sure where to be in order to make the turn they wanted to. MN-15 is signed at 60 mph as it passes under the bridge, and CR-120 is signed at 40 mph up above. Very few people were getting up to 40 along CR-120. I also noticed a strange 45 mph sign on CR-120 west of the interchange at a new roundabout at the entrance to the CentraCare complex -- it ended up being a strange sequence something like: 45 mph sign, pedestrian crossing sign, roundabout sign (with 15mph advised speed).

Anyway, I'm still taking a bit of a wait-and-see approach to DDIs. They seem fairly promising, but the fan-out required for on-/off-ramp traffic to split into both directions seems to take up a lot of space. I generally think DDIs are a better option than SPUIs, perhaps only because the stop-light configuration seems a bit simpler (though the MN-15/CR-120 junction at least one extra for the off-ramp leading from SB MN-15 to WB CR-120 (probably because that leg of the off-ramp is two lanes wide).

I've heard that Carmel, Indiana (a suburb of Indianapolis) is considered the roundabout capital of the U.S. -- they're getting rid of stop lights, and expect to only have one set of lights left within a few years. I kind of like their expressway interchanges, which are relatively compact (roughly half the width of the St. Cloud/Sartell DDI when measuring from one side of the expressway corridor to the other), which are mostly like this:



I don't like how the pedestrian walkway wiggles toward the center of the hourglass shape, but that could be straightened. It only requires crossing two roadways rather than the 4 that a DDI does, and there aren't any signals to maintain.

Tom H.
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Tom H. » October 30th, 2013, 8:22 am

Seems like if you were willing to slow down the traffic a bit and square out the corners, those type of interchanges could be very compact. I also like how they provide opportunities for some town-square-like space in the middle - perfect spot for a statue or something.

talindsay
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby talindsay » October 30th, 2013, 9:03 am

That Indiana one is essentially the same as most interchanges in Northern Ireland, at least as of the late 1990s when I last drove there. In my opinion it's a much smarter way to do it than that DDI design - what a confusing mess.

Two examples of typical Belfast interchanges:
http://goo.gl/maps/ZUCUI
http://goo.gl/maps/jadbO

Moderato
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Re: Street, Road and Highway Projects

Postby Moderato » November 1st, 2013, 9:48 pm

Plan to extend 77th St. in Richfield under Highway 77. Seems like a no-brainer!

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/230296631.html


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