Street, Road and Highway Projects

[Anondson]

I think restoring 6th (or whatever non Olson Memorial Highway name it gets) would be great. I look at how TH 7 scales down from a highway with frontage roads right at the Minneapolis border and becomes Lake Street.

It is fair to imagine TH 55 changing exactly the same at the city border, turning into a city street lined with apartments and commercial buildings right up to the sidewalk.

[SurlyLHT]

I think restoring 6th (or whatever non Olson Memorial Highway name it gets) would be great. I look at how TH 7 scales down from a highway with frontage roads right at the Minneapolis border and becomes Lake Street.

It is fair to imagine TH 55 changing exactly the same at the city border, turning into a city street lined with apartments and commercial buildings right up to the sidewalk.

I like the idea, this road is terrible, and is scary to bike through.

With that said I think Our Streets should turn it over to the neighborhoods associations and the community. They are not a trustworthy partner and this should come from Northsiders, not Southsiders. If they want to be involved it should be in a supportive manner, not lead.

Also, this area is quite upset about gentrification from the Blue Line, so I foresee significant pushback at this.


Also, I would recommend this start at Theo Wirth Parkway so that North can be connected more to the park. The 55 bridge over the tracks is falling apart you almost need to wear a helmet when passing underneath on the Luce Line trail to save your head from the falling concrete.

Ditch the bus lanes, and the median and turn the the new space over the community with housing, parks and businesses. Find a financing mechanism and turn the store fronts into business incubators and turn it into an cultural corridor with the new design representing the needs and desires of the community. (May be great to find a way to make it so they buildings are cooperative or owned by Northsiders to build wealth. We need to keep the money in North.)

[EOst]

Removing the Olson name--especially to restore a colorless designation like "6th Ave N," which no one alive today remembers at all--seems unnecessarily polarizing for what is already going to be an enormous lift. There's still plenty of affection for Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson out there.

[thespeedmccool]

With that said I think Our Streets should turn it over to the neighborhoods associations and the community. They are not a trustworthy partner and this should come from Northsiders, not Southsiders. If they want to be involved it should be in a supportive manner, not lead.

I don't think there's anything wrong with OurStreets taking the lead. They have a proven method and have produced results for Minneapolitans already. If the community doesn't want a diet on Olson, they can reject OurStreets's support on their own.

Removing the Olson name--especially to restore a colorless designation like "6th Ave N," which no one alive today remembers at all--seems unnecessarily polarizing for what is already going to be an enormous lift. There's still plenty of affection for Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson out there.

Full agree. Olson is the name now and has been for decades. Olson was an exceptional Minnesotan and a great progressive at that. I hope MNDOT agrees to go along with this diet and maybe co-sign it as "6th Avenue North" and "Floyd Olson Avenue" or something.

[thespeedmccool]

I looked into it, and my suspicion was confirmed: Highway 55 is established in law as the "Floyd B. Olson Memorial Highway," so that would have to be changed by the legislature to have the road renamed (that or MNDOT would have to turnback the segment when it gets dieted, which may be possible because I don't think this segment is required to be MNDOT-owned in law, and 55 could theoretically be rerouted along highways 100 and 394.) Link here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/202 ... t.161.14.3

Not that a name change is a tough thing to do from a legislative perspective, but nothing is certain as long as Scott Newman is the Senate transportation lead.

[Trademark]

Ditch the bus lanes, and the median and turn the the new space over the community with housing, parks and businesses. Find a financing mechanism and turn the store fronts into business incubators and turn it into an cultural corridor with the new design representing the needs and desires of the community. (May be great to find a way to make it so they buildings are cooperative or owned by Northsiders to build wealth. We need to keep the money in North.)

I agree with all this except ditching the bus lanes. With the proposed 55, and 169 BRT's and the current C line traveling here. This is a great candidate for bus lanes. Especially with the rest of the C line crawling along Penn Ave. We need to keep our Rapid buses rapid.

Side note. When the blue line ext and green line ext are complete and if the 55 and 169 BRT's are implemented. I would love to see the C line continue on Penn avenue to the green line. Maybe even shooting over to the West end. A transfer to the blue line should be able to handle the downtown traffic. And a transfer to the 2 BRT's could take over the transit on Olsen. Allowing a direct connection to the green line without having to go all the way downtown is a huge benefit for people traveling to the many jobs on the Southwest corridor.

[Mdcastle]

Two points:

Cities are free to name streets whatever they want regardless of what the official memorial highway designation is. To use just one example of a thousand, Highway 13 in New Prague is known as "4th Ave SE" and not "Czech Heritage Highway".

https://www.dot.state.mn.us/maps/gdma/d ... s_2021.pdf

It's correct that MnDot is not constitutionally obligated to maintain Marked Highway 55; it's Legislative Route 188, not a constitutional route. It's also true that they do ditch constitutional routes when they want to with the legal fiction that it still counts if the specified cities are touched by trunk highways. MN 54 is a constitutional route and was recently removed. Constitutional / Marked Highway 50 between Lakeville and Farmington is an older but closer example- Constitutional Route 50 still "touches Minneapolis" by following 3, 149, and 55."

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/maps/gdma/da ... _Route.pdf

[SurlyLHT]

Looks like they have the Harrison Neighborhood Assn involved, but I'm unsure of support from the others. I would watch for movement from State Representatives and city leaders given this is a state highway.

Have any other highways been given the complete street makeover which they propose?

I take the C Line and stand by my assertion they remove the bus lanes. They should also remove the frontage roads as much as possible.

[Trademark]

Looks like they have the Harrison Neighborhood Assn involved, but I'm unsure of support from the others. I would watch for movement from State Representatives and city leaders given this is a state highway.

Have any other highways been given the complete street makeover which they propose?

I take the C Line and stand by my assertion they remove the bus lanes. They should also remove the frontage roads as much as possible.

I agree that they should remove most of the frontage roads. But what is the reasoning for removing bus lanes?

Especially considering how much right of way can already be gained by removing the median, frontage road, and a lane in each direction

[SurlyLHT]

Looks like they have the Harrison Neighborhood Assn involved, but I'm unsure of support from the others. I would watch for movement from State Representatives and city leaders given this is a state highway.

Have any other highways been given the complete street makeover which they propose?

I take the C Line and stand by my assertion they remove the bus lanes. They should also remove the frontage roads as much as possible.

I agree that they should remove most of the frontage roads. But what is the reasoning for removing bus lanes?

Especially considering how much right of way can already be gained by removing the median, frontage road, and a lane in each direction

Regarding the bus lanes, I say they should do some traffic modeling and see if there is a material difference in travel time. The city and County have made Penn Ave crawl, the lights have the C line and others stopped at abandoned Elementary schools for which the lights were first installed for. We're better off removing the low-hanging fruit there with the lights than the slight gain to potentially be made here.

[Trademark]

Looks like they have the Harrison Neighborhood Assn involved, but I'm unsure of support from the others. I would watch for movement from State Representatives and city leaders given this is a state highway.

Have any other highways been given the complete street makeover which they propose?

I take the C Line and stand by my assertion they remove the bus lanes. They should also remove the frontage roads as much as possible.

I agree that they should remove most of the frontage roads. But what is the reasoning for removing bus lanes?

Especially considering how much right of way can already be gained by removing the median, frontage road, and a lane in each direction

Regarding the bus lanes, I say they should do some traffic modeling and see if there is a material difference in travel time. The city and County have made Penn Ave crawl, the lights have the C line and others stopped at abandoned Elementary schools for which the lights were first installed for. We're better off removing the low-hanging fruit there with the lights than the slight gain to potentially be made here.

I agree that the C line on Penn is slow. And problematic. Removing stoplights should be a priority, but when we're talking about a road reconstruction that will be in place for decades. It seems foolish to give away unnecessary right of way that we would later regret if this area grows to the expectations that the community has for this road and one of the purposes for reclaiming 6th/Olsen. If this area becomes like Hennepin or Lyndale, and has more destinations around the road then the traffic will increase which will only slow down the buses further.

It reminds me of a not just bikes quote where he said "The best measure of a city is whether the buses get stuck in traffic." On so many streets in this city there is no choice but for them to get stuck in traffic due to a lack of right of way. This is being exasperated by all of the 4-3 conversions that the city is implementing while great for pedestrians its negating any potential for bus lanes.

When we have the rare opportunity to implement them. We need to take it if we are at all serious about not designing an auto centric environment. Slowing down cars doesn't do anything for a modal shift without providing real alternatives that people can take regardless of their physical ability. Otherwise you just decrease everyone's mobility which hurts equity goals.

[StandishGuy]

So, the Our Streets and Harrison Neighborhood Association effort is sort of the very first step towards advocating for major changes to Olson Highway/ 55. I can assure you that MNDOT is not yet close to being on board with such a concept, let alone renaming or redesigning it. MNDOT refused to even consider the idea of making Olson Highway a 4-lane concept rather than their current 6-lane version when the Blue Line LRT was planned to run down the median. This is a huge lift.

By the way I hope a similar effort will take place for Hiawatha Avenue through south Minneapolis. That awful highway is over built and divides communities too.

[thespeedmccool]

Hiawatha would be an even tougher lift.

I think it's possible to get MNDOT on board with the idea that Olson isn't integral to the regional highway network between Hwy. 100 and I-94. Highway 55 could just be shifted to 100/394/94 to downtown.

Hiawatha is significantly less easy to replace from a system continuity perspective. I guess Highway 55 could be rerouted along 62/35W, but that's notably less efficient for drivers than 55 is today.

[Trademark]

Hiawatha would be an even tougher lift.

I think it's possible to get MNDOT on board with the idea that Olson isn't integral to the regional highway network between Hwy. 100 and I-94. Highway 55 could just be shifted to 100/394/94 to downtown.

Hiawatha is significantly less easy to replace from a system continuity perspective. I guess Highway 55 could be rerouted along 62/35W, but that's notably less efficient for drivers than 55 is today.

And would likely require 6 Laning Hwy-62 for MN-Dot to consider it. Which would mean a lot of property takings.

[SurlyLHT]

So, the Our Streets and Harrison Neighborhood Association effort is sort of the very first step towards advocating for major changes to Olson Highway/ 55. I can assure you that MNDOT is not yet close to being on board with such a concept, let alone renaming or redesigning it. MNDOT refused to even consider the idea of making Olson Highway a 4-lane concept rather than their current 6-lane version when the Blue Line LRT was planned to run down the median. This is a huge lift.

By the way I hope a similar effort will take place for Hiawatha Avenue through south Minneapolis. That awful highway is over built and divides communities too.

So this is basically a pie-in the sky idea and the proponents need to do some serious lobbying of officials and help work out significant issues?

Even if they were able to eliminate the frontage roads and medians and make the thing more compact it would divide the community less. When you cross it the distance between the neighborhoods on each side is a ways.

Capture.PNG

[Trademark]

So, the Our Streets and Harrison Neighborhood Association effort is sort of the very first step towards advocating for major changes to Olson Highway/ 55. I can assure you that MNDOT is not yet close to being on board with such a concept, let alone renaming or redesigning it. MNDOT refused to even consider the idea of making Olson Highway a 4-lane concept rather than their current 6-lane version when the Blue Line LRT was planned to run down the median. This is a huge lift.

By the way I hope a similar effort will take place for Hiawatha Avenue through south Minneapolis. That awful highway is over built and divides communities too.

So this is basically a pie-in the sky idea and the proponents need to do some serious lobbying of officials and help work out significant issues?

Even if they were able to eliminate the frontage roads and medians and make the thing more compact it would divide the community less. When you cross it the distance between the neighborhoods on each side is a ways.

Capture.PNG

It is a huge ask to get this done. But I think MnDOT is more receptive now then they were previously when the light rail on Olsen was being discussed. Even the rethinking 94 project while not doing what many on this forum would advocate for is still progress in making sure that pedestrian, bike, and transit, and community voices are being heard. Leading to proposals like the freeway cap. And not expanding the highway to 10 lanes. If they are making small concessions on the most important transportation corridor in the state. I think they'll be much more receptive to a larger concessions on Highway 55. Which has very little importance in the regional network.

[SurlyLHT]

They might want to even talk to Golden Valley and see if they can get them on board. This could start at Schaper Road or maybe even 100. It would be a chance for them to get some sort of main street or etc.

[alexschief]

Recommended design for Hennepin from Franklin from Lake has both bus lanes and a cycletrack. Super promising development, after the project slipped from its timeline and seemed to be under political pressure to be watered down.

Cross sections: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/media/-ww ... ctions.pdf
Plan view: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/media/-ww ... layout.pdf

It seems to me that this also increases the long-term chance that Hennepin in downtown will get bus lanes. Hopefully!

[thespeedmccool]

Recommended design for Hennepin from Franklin from Lake has both bus lanes and a cycletrack. Super promising development, after the project slipped from its timeline and seemed to be under political pressure to be watered down.

Cross sections: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/media/-ww ... ctions.pdf
Plan view: https://www.minneapolismn.gov/media/-ww ... layout.pdf

It seems to me that this also increases the long-term chance that Hennepin in downtown will get bus lanes. Hopefully!

Excellent news!

[Tiller]

That looks great, now we just need that layout for Lake Street!!