Street, Road and Highway Projects

[Anondson]

I am so pleased at the extended bumpouts at Colfax, Dupont, and Emerson. Plus the curbs closing down eastbound 28th to a single (wide) lane.

Nice details in it.

[Hero]

Closing the causeway is absolutely the solution, but that doesn't mean it will happen.

How would access be retained to Bloomington Ave into Richfield? Would drivers have to cut through lake nokomis Parkway? Would Portland Ave be redone to allow cars to continue towards 62 west? Or at the very least become even more dangerous then that section already is especially near 60th to 66th. Will 28th avenue be given a bunch of traffic lights because people will be more likely to run those stop signs near 62 with that being the only access point? Will Minnehaha creek become more car centric and not a parkway anymore with no east west access south of 42nd Street besides that with 62 unable to be accessed anymore?

Cedar avenue is a symptom of the problem which is the breakdown of the grid which forces all the cars onto Cedar. Get rid of Cedar and you make the problem worse now better.

I was thinking about this today and it would be nice to have 58th reconnected and/or Woodlawn and Edgerwater connected. I'd trade the extra minute it would take to reach the next exit on 62 for a reconnected grid and less traffic on Cedar. No need to rework Portland ave take the Diamond lake exit or 60th to Lyndale for 62 west. I'm not convinced 28th would have a significant increase in traffic I'd imagine we would experience the reverse of induced demand.

Also, Cedar is currently connected to Bloomington ave. I don't think that needs to change.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/44.9013 ... 0?hl=en-GB

[DanPatchToget]

The signals at the Wooddale & Highway 7 interchange are finally working after more than a year(?) of flashing red.

[DanPatchToget]

Southwest LRT has gotten a lot of criticism and rightfully so, but I've wondered how many major road projects in the Twin Cities have gone over budget? I don't ever recall a time where the press and/or the government entity responsible for a road project reported a cost overrun, which to me seems like either we've just been lucky with road projects staying within budget or there's a double standard when it comes to cost overruns of road vs transit projects.

[Tcmetro]

Part of it is the sticker shock of light rail, which is far more expensive than the big reconstruction projects that have been completed recently. I think there's also less scrutiny over road projects because the vast majority of trips are made by car, so any kind of expansion project is seen favorably by the public. Light rail gets more scrutiny because most drivers even within a corridor are unlikely to become riders.

Here in Chicago there's been quite a bit of media coverage of cost and time overruns on the Circle interchange reconstruction. The construction has negatively affected local and regional travel, as it's the only way to drive across the Chicago region without paying a toll.

[DanPatchToget]

I guess one's view of sticker shock is different, but for me it's shocking seeing the price of major road projects like the new 35W Minnesota River Crossing ($147.6 million), St. Croix River Crossing (almost $700 million, the bridge itself $395 million), the 35W & 494 Interchange (no idea what the exact cost will be but it's hundreds of millions), etc. Yes they're not as expensive as light rail, but these big road projects happen every year whereas the light rail projects are years apart.

[Anondson]

I’m not Duluth-connected, but I recall there is a bridge to Superior that is eye-watering in price.

[StandishGuy]

There's another project in Duluth related to an I35 freeway interchange that reportedly will cost north of $300 million. I think it is known as something like "the tangle". My jaw drops every time I read about it considering Duluth only has 86,000 residents and the Twin Ports metro has fewer than 300,000 folks.

[DanPatchToget]

There's another project in Duluth related to an I35 freeway interchange that reportedly will cost north of $300 million. I think it is known as something like "the tangle". My jaw drops every time I read about it considering Duluth only has 86,000 residents and the Twin Ports metro has fewer than 300,000 folks.

Is it for getting people to their cabins quicker?

I've gone down a rabbit hole looking at various road projects and seeing how much they cost. The realignment of Highway 212 through the southwest suburbs supposedly cost approximately $308.1 million (adjusted for inflation, and this is from Wikipedia so perhaps there's a better source out there). Also they're extending the 4-lane divided highway section of 212 westward from Chaska to Norwood Young America, which according to Carver County will cost $115 million. Then there's all the construction MnDOT is doing on I-94 from Maple Grove to Clearwater. I remembering seeing the new Dayton Parkway interchange under construction last September. According to MnDOT all the work they're doing along that section of I-94 will cost $350 million. I tried looking for the cost of building Highway 610, but all I could find was $80 million to complete* it through Maple Grove (*I believe they're trying to get funding to build the ramps needed to allow movement in all directions between 610 and I-94).

[Mdcastle]

That would be the "Can of Worms".

Road projects rarely go over budget to such extremes because we do so much of it we have a good idea how much an interstate overpass or a mile of concrete pavement costs. We haven't done much building rail tunnels through swamps. Even the St. Croix Crossing came in within budget because while only the second bridge of it's type in the U.S, we brought in European experts used to working with that type.

Notorious road projects that did go over budget were the Big Dig, a complicated tunnel (although probably as much to contractor fraud and embezzlement as actual engineering reasons), and the East span of the Bay Bridge, where they wanted something that looked cute instead of a simple girder bridge, so they tried something that had never been done before in the US at a time when steel was at an all-time high.

Minnesota the one fiasco I can think of was small in absolute terms ($1 Million) but a large percentage of the project, the Highway 19 and 169 interchange. They didn't do soil borings deep enough or in the right location, so when they got all the dirt piled up the entire thing collapsed. So they had to remove it all, replace the soils underneath, and then put it back.

[Mdcastle]

The Can of Worms rebuild is so a concrete bridge doesn't fall down on people traveling to their cabins. Or residents of Duluth traveling around the city. There's few minor changes like moving exits from the left to the right, but it's mostly just replacing the existing 50 year old bridges and pavement.

[DanPatchToget]

That would be the "Can of Worms".

Road projects rarely go over budget to such extremes because we do so much of it we have a good idea how much an interstate overpass or a mile of concrete pavement costs. We haven't done much building rail tunnels through swamps. Even the St. Croix Crossing came in within budget because while only the second bridge of it's type in the U.S, we brought in European experts used to working with that type.

Then why don't we bring in European experts who have built railway tunnels under or near bodies of water? You might be surprised how many railway tunnels the Dutch have built under canals.

The Can of Worms rebuild is so a concrete bridge doesn't fall down on people traveling to their cabins. Or residents of Duluth traveling around the city. There's few minor changes like moving exits from the left to the right, but it's mostly just replacing the existing 50 year old bridges and pavement.

Is the "Can of Worms" the cluster of ramps where I-35, I-535, and Highway 53 come together? Seems like it would cheaper and simpler to gut some of it including the elevated section of Highway 53 going north. Don't have to worry about a concrete bridge falling when there isn't one.

[thespeedmccool]

The Wakota Bridge overran budgets and took some extra years to complete, but I think the original contractor (who was pushed out after mistakes) covered the extra costs.

[DanPatchToget]

I looked into that and found a couple MPR articles about it. Apparently Lunda Construction was the contractor, MnDOT halted construction and ousted Lunda, put the construction contract out for rebidding in hopes of getting a lower bid, and MnDOT gave it back to Lunda with the same price tag as before.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2006/12/2 ... ridgedelay
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2008/01/25/wakotabid

[Mdcastle]

Had forgotten about that one. Yeah, that was another one where they were trying to use cutting edge construction techniques, they were pushing post-tensioned concrete box spans to lengths that hadn't been done much before, and as a result they didn't use as many cables as they needed to and the bridge started cracking.

[Mdcastle]

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2018/mandated/180368.pdf

State construction projects came in 3.5% over budget from 2013-2017. This might be high since when listing the individual projects, they're counting the entire project cost as an overage when no initial estimate is available and it's not clear if they're doing this in the summary section also.

Some individual projects that really jump out are a mill and overlay and ADA improvements on MN 18 (Estimate: 3.5 million, actual cost 11.5 million), and the Rice interchange ($17.9 / $6.7). the Dresbach Bridge ($172.6 / $139.1), Adding a left turn lane on Highway 65 at Isanti (3.1 / $7.0)

If there's a pattern, it's that anything that involves a lot of grading and paving is very erratic and can veer off in wildly both directions, while anything that's a major structure comes in on or below budget. My theory is that we know pretty well what to expect when building an overpass, but when it comes to repaving, you never know what you're going to find when you strip off the pavement, could be a lot better or a lot worse then what the engineers expect. And / or a lot more companies do paving than build bridges, so there's the possibility of a lowball bid from a company desperate for work.

[xandrex]

Is the "Can of Worms" the cluster of ramps where I-35, I-535, and Highway 53 come together? Seems like it would cheaper and simpler to gut some of it including the elevated section of Highway 53 going north. Don't have to worry about a concrete bridge falling when there isn't one.

That's indeed the Can of Worms. It's a really bad tangle of highways and has some atrocious spots where you have to essentially blindly merge into another lane of traffic. There might be a cheaper way to do it, but it really does need to be replaced.

[StandishGuy]

There's no doubt that the "Can of Worms" is at the end of its' life cycle, but maybe it doesn't need to be replaced with those over-engineered freeway interchanges. What else could be done in Duluth for $300+ million that would result in homes for people, productive land uses like small businesses or repairing already existing streets? It is just an increadibly large amount of public resources poured into one interchange. It's gross. MNDOT should look at removing the freeway and reconnecting the community with normal streets.

[MNdible]

There is no community that is being cut off by this freeway, and there never has been. The only land uses that are being cut off are a wastewater treatment facility and a railyard. And the idea that routing a bunch of traffic (and a fair number of semi-trucks) through the Lincoln Park district rather than maintaining the existing grade separation would be a benefit?

[DanPatchToget]

The elevated part of Highway 53 does indeed split residential neighborhoods from businesses. Is it really worth keeping that half mile of grade-separation that will require an over-engineered interchange with I-35 and I-535? To me the answer is no. We can keep the interchange for I-35 and I-535, but there's no need for a grade-separated Highway 53 and making this interchange more complicated than it has to be.