Hennepin & Lyndale Bottleneck Project

[RailBaronYarr]

Can anyone answer this question somewhat accurately:

How many people come from points west of Hennepin & Lake and end up north of Hennepin/Lyndale (or east via 94 or north via 94) in the AM, and the reverse in the PM?

MNdible, yes this is a constraint. It always was. But it's made even worse by the addition of that freeway we sprinkled in with magic fairy dust, its exit ramps paved with unicorn horn dust, and that 394 link trenched by some other mythical reference. This $9m project can't solve the non-market priced roads in our region, but market pricing and space efficiencies were at least pragmatic system-wide suggestions that would certainly impact this area's congestion. Politics, not necessarily budget or physical/engineering constraints, keep us from tolling existing capacity, and (circling back to my question) in my mind that would include those who use the Bottleneck as a thru-route to avoid other congested freeway links.

This project is a band-aid. So David/twincitizen are right - what are the talking points for how this fits into a 10-20 year vision? What are the small ways the city or Metro Transit can throw meaningful dollars at this project to improve non-auto mode efficiency and safety? Should the Hennepin aBRT be considered? Extending the scope to making Hennepin parking lanes during rush hours bus-only so those in Uptown choose to bus instead of drive into doontoon? I don't know.

[Mdcastle]

Without taking a detailed look at traffic counts and such, my gut reaction to "will it work?" is that you'd want the bypass lane on the northeast to keep traffic from backing up on the ramp down to the freeway.

[froggie]

It should be noted that MnDOT proposed something similar to Rich's design during their 2007 freeway study.

Still like my idea better. :o)

[fehler]

The Hennepin->north and Lyndale->south cross wouldn't work, it'd be a big zippery mess. Need more room, or a "feeder circle" and flyover of the main circle.

[woofner]

I'm no traffic engineer, but would something like this work?

I'd guess that the circle would need bypass ramps in a few spots as well as signals to work. It's possible that the NB Hennepin and SB Lyndale approaches could be separated more than they're depicted here, which might obviate the need for signals, but still I think you'd want at least on-demand signalization. There is plenty of queuing space in most of the approaches, after all. But it would still be a more efficient solution than the expensive, space wasting ramps that are there now.

I go through the Bottleneck every day in peak direction, and it never takes more than 6 minutes to get the .6 miles from Franklin to Dunwoody. That is typical urban average speed. For cars, when you hit all greens (it does happen occasionally) you can get through in 4 minutes (google says 2), which is great time for city driving. While there is a greater tendency for delay there, it is still pretty rare.

So the Bottleneck doesn't have a problem with capacity, and if its weaving problem could be mitigated, there is every reason to believe it could operate substantially similar to today if one lane in each direction were converted to bus lanes. It will be a test of the city's recent policy to reduce VMT whether a change of this sort is on the table.

[twincitizen]

A. Man, if there wasn't already a tunnel under there, it could be almost exactly like Dupont Circle in DC, where Connecticut Ave tunnels under the circle and other approaches are controlled by signals.

B. How about a hover ring roundabout, but for cars? Lyndale could continue (under the ring) at grade level, undisturbed by highway-bound traffic. Lyndale could also have wide sidewalks, cycletracks, etc. I'm not sure what to do with NB Hennepin, but it would solve many of the problems, if physically possible. 3D Urbanism, as Levinson posted on streets.mn the other day.

EDIT: OK, kind of joking on B. If we didn't have the flyover ramps, this would actually be a great location for the hover ring for bikes and peds. That's what spurred the idea of an elevated roundabout for cars, combined with the Dupont Circle concept, where the busier street avoids the circle entirely.

[mulad]

I have a feeling that that's a huge roundabout / traffic circle compared to what's needed, though a big one might not be a bad idea. I know someone had voiced concerns about the rerouted semi trucks that can't go through the tunnel -- I'm not sure how big a roundabout needs to be in order to avoid the need for an inner apron. A smaller one might be able to open up some properties for development, even with some bypass lanes, making TIF-style funding is probably feasible, at least for a slice of the overall project cost.

I do like the idea of elevating the roadway somewhat, along the lines of what twincitizen mentioned -- straight-through routes for pedestrians/bikes (and maybe buses/trains) could pass underneath.

[twincitizen]

I'm guessing the biggest issue would be the grade change between the freeway and the hypothetical elevated roundabout. That and we'd be creating a whole new slew of elevated roadway that would only last 50-60 years and be expensive to maintain. It couldn't possibly look worse than the current flyover bridges though... And man would it be great to have a contiguous Lyndale Avenue at grade, with sidewalks and a cycletrack, free from highway-bound traffic.

[mulad]

Yeah, I'm generally hoping the idea could be done with embankments, and only have short bridges for the holes that get poked in it for the straight-through pieces, but I'm not sure how practical that is. The approaches for the existing bridges seem to go fairly high though.

Of course, this area is only part of the problem -- a lot of the trouble is to the north at the intersections by the Walker Art Center. Could a pair of smaller 3/4-roundabouts (like this) work there?

[bubzki2]

What do we think the odds are of any roundabouts happening at this juncture? It seems a clear choice if funding is there, but I doubt we'll see any this time around.

[mulad]

Well, a good question for the meeting would be, "How much money would it take to rebuild as-is?" (Or if that's already been answered, let me know.) I'd guess somewhere in the range of $2-3 million if they're just planning on doing a mill-and-overlay type of thing for the road surface, then perhaps another $1 million per mile of repaved/altered sidewalks. That could still leave half of the money available for changes. Not a lot for an area this big, but it's something.

A big roundabout is probably not possible, but maybe one of the existing intersections. At this moment, I'm kind of eyeing the intersection just southwest of the church -- I feel like something could tuck under that bridge nicely.

Also, perhaps it's worthwhile to ask if MnPASS tolling could be implemented on the ramps somehow. The freeway can cause a pretty crushing load on the surface streets, and maybe that needs to have a dollar figure attached to it so people will use other ways into/out of downtown and Uptown.

[bubzki2]

Also, it must be said that the Vast expanse at Groveland & Gridlock is probably big enough for a 2-lane roundabout, is it not? That might be a small step in the right direction without having to rip up and reconfigure the spaghetti bowl?

[twincitizen]

I think it's fair to assume they already know what they're spending >90% of the $9MM budget on. It's hard not to get wrapped up in fantasy roundabout, 20-30 years from now tunnel replacement, etc. We should really try to focus on the current project at hand though. That would be the most helpful in actually having a positive impact on the project, whether it be slight tweaks to ped infrastructure, bus stop placement, traffic signals, etc.

It's very clear there will be no major infrastructural changes in 2015-16. This is a band-aid intended to get us through the next decade plus, until the flyover bridges literally start crumbling. It's probably best to focus on relatively inexpensive things that could actually get shoehorned into this budget. I'd be totally down with lobbying our City Council or Hennepin County Board to kick in another million, redirected from another project, to get this one closer to "better".

P.S. Even after reminding you guys about the meeting time/location twice, I still managed to trick my brain that it was at 4:30. Didn't confirm until I was in the Walker lobby. Ah well, at least the 1HR parking was free. See you guys at 6:30 or shortly thereafter.

[BigIdeasGuy]

What do we think the odds are of any roundabouts happening at this juncture? It seems a clear choice if funding is there, but I doubt we'll see any this time around.

If by this juncture you mean right now with the current $9m rebuild the odds are as close to zero as possible. As for the funding, that's going to be a huge hurdle to build something like the traffic circle or something similar. My completely uneducated guess it to build it you would be north of $100M to build and do it right.

[David Greene]

It was good to see a number of you at the open house.

I'm sure others will have lots to say but here's my takeaway: this is a road resurfacing project and nothing more. It's a total waste of time to have public meetings on this and just disappoint everyone in the end. There are no bike/ped/transit improvements.

It's pretty much what I expected except I was dumbfounded that the project didn't include addressing the horrendous interface of the cycle track to Lyndale south of 94. I asked the lead engineer about why the scope of the project didn't include that and his first response was that, "Lyndale was already rebuilt recently." That's a telling statement about the priorities for this project.

The other thing that screamed at me was the board listing project stakeholders. The LowryHill neighborhood was explicitly mentioned, but no others. A staffperson later corrected me and said that "Citizens for Loring Park" (or whatever it was) is actually the Loring Park Neighborhood. I'm not sure if that's true or not.

In any case, it looked pretty bad to have the wealthiest neighborhood in the area listed explicitly as an important stakeholder but not Stevens Square, The Wedge or Whittier.

[David Greene]

This is a band-aid intended to get us through the next decade plus, until the flyover bridges literally start crumbling.

I asked a few people at tonight's meeting what the lifespan of those bridges and flyovers is, but no one could give me an answer. Anyone have any idea when those would need to be rebuilt, because that's the time for major changes to happen.

[twincitizen]

I made the same comment live in person to one of the lead consultants, that this is clearly a band-aid until a true reconstruction, and basically got an eye-roll. I'm not a civil engineer, but it's a fact that those flyover bridges will not last forever, is it not? They were built in the 1960s, so they are all about 50 years old. By the time we come up with a plan to fully reconstruct this area, secure funding, and actually begin construction, they'll be at least 65-70, no? That seems a tad unrealistic.

Either way, the meeting tonight was a total shit-show. It was pointless. They are proposing next to zero changes. This is a repaving project, with better marked crosswalks, and nothing more. This is an embarrassment. We all understood that this was a near-term fix and has a limited budget and still managed to walk away disappointed. There are literally zero actual changes proposed to lane configurations. No sidewalk added to the weird stretch that only has a cycletrack. No bus improvements. The boards at the meeting didn't even provide a count of bus passengers using the bottleneck. Not one Metro Transit employee was present. I'm really confused why Minneapolis Public Works even decided this project was worthy of a website and open house. They should have just kept their mouths shut and repaved the streets. This is about to get ugly (for Public Works)

[Yourpalborno]

I asked one of the managers at the maps about the timeline for the major reconstruction that everyone wants. He replied that there isn't one. This is mostly due to lack of funding. There is little chance the state/county/ city could ever get the federal dollars needed to make this mess correct. He also mentioned that any reconstruction plans are incredibly complex because just about every building on the intersection is historic.

Just like everyone else, I left realizing that this is nothing more than a glorified resufacing project.

[mattaudio]

Disappointed to hear they aren't considering reducing the lanes. Clearly the existing lanes are too expensive... reducing lanes would reduce our cash flow liability for a mill and overlay in another decade or two.

[mulad]

It doesn't zoom in far enough for me to pick out the individual ramps, but this MinnPost page shows that the bridges date to 1965 -- so yeah, they'll officially turn 50 years old next year.

That manager's comment about historic structures in the area seems like a strange deflection, and makes me think he's got the typical "MOAR LANES" traffic engineering thoughts going through his head. There's quite a lot of room to do something in the existing right-of-way.