Street, Road and Highway Projects

[EOst]

Those bus stops at 26th better be sufficient to support C Line ABRT extension down Cedar.

Southbound should be fine, but northbound could be a little tricky with the shared use path; you'd either have to shrink the path to 6-8' behind the station or have trail traffic running between the station and the street. Metro Transit/Ramsey County will be doing a mixture of these on Rice Street with the G Line.

[thespeedmccool]

Interesting tidbit here

"As Rainville has explained to the North Loop Neighborhood Association, [Hennepin County] initially supported these flashing signals and pedestrian refuges, but then withdrew that support because they intend to reconfigure Washington Avenue in a few years to allow for Bus Rapid Transit lanes."

[Silophant]

Hennepin County PW continues to unexpectedly be the best of the three agencies that build and maintain roads in Minneapolis. It occurs to me that we might have bus lanes on the downtown section of Hennepin if it hadn't been turned back to City control.

[EOst]

Does that explanation strike anyone else as a little strange? I can easily imagine new bus lanes on the current 5-lane section southeast of N 3rd Ave, but the rest of Washington has no BRT routes coming at the moment and needs that space anyway for the planned protected bikeway up to Plymouth. I don't see how bus lanes would impact median refuges up at 6th or 8th unless Hennepin intends to drop the bike lanes (or all the parking, but that seems even less likely).

[Silophant]

With the Route 3 now extended to 10th and Washington, and a LRT station (probably) being built on the next block, I'm wondering if they're planning on having the H Line run to 10th and Washington instead of cutting over to terminate in the B Ramp. Looks like Washington is 100' wide from building face to building face, just like Hennepin, so they're maybe planning on replicating that design? (Possibly with off-peak parking in the bus lanes like on Hennepin/1st NE, until such time as Ward 3 gets a less car-brained CM.)

[Wezle]

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download ... tation.pdf

MNDOT 15% presentation on the 2028 upcoming Central Ave reconstruction for the Minneapolis bicycle and pedestrian advisory committees. Plans look like they'll include sidewalk level bike lanes and bus lanes from the river to 37th Ave as well as the tried and true 4-3 lane conversion.

Northeast's roads will look very different by 2030 between all of the upcoming and current projects there.

[Silophant]

It's taking a long time, but it's really good to finally see NE making progress towards being as bikeable as it's made out to be. Hopefully the bike and bus improvments continue at least a little ways into Columbia Heights and don't just cut off sharp at 37th.

[trkaiser]

MNDOT is currently finalizing the Central rebuild up to 694, and the current vision will likely include a slight road diet up to somewhere around 44th - give or take - and should include a significant upgrade for bikes and pedestrians throughout the corridor. It's currently looking pretty good given the constraints, and that the F-line will be coming through at the same time. The project was delayed to coordinate the efforts.

[thespeedmccool]

Ramsey County is planning to reconstruct the freeway stub that is Pennsylvania Avenue in 2028 or 2029: Link

Leave a comment, folks. This segment serves a surprising 10-12k drivers a day (I would've thought it was much less used) but there's still no reason this is an expressway. I'll be leaving a comment asking them to return the interchange with Jackson Street to an intersection.

[twincitizen]

I swear I remember seeing concept drawings for that stretch of Pennsylvania Ave within the past few years, maybe shared on this forum. Road diet, some realignment and maybe closing some of ramps off Pennsylvania to Jackson. Does that ring a bell for anyone else? I'm at least half sure it was an actual concept from the city or county and not just this streets.mn post from 2019: https://streets.mn/2019/08/27/pennsylva ... revisited/

[Wezle]

New information on the University Ave NE reconstruction. Potential roundabouts for Broadway and Lowry intersections, 4-3 conversion, wider sidewalks, medians, and curb extensions. Survey included. Check it out!

https://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/proje ... esign.html

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T2NMFX6

[MNdible]

Those Lowry options are all pretty terrible. I know it's not a landmark, but it would be a bummer to lose the old Stasiu's building and completely give up the street face here.

Also, medians serve a purpose for pedestrians, but it feels like the plan is leaning too much on them. Streets with medians lose all of their flexibility. Unexpected stuff happens (accidents, emergencies, utility work), and if you can't get around it because of a median, you've just put the street out of commission.

[Silophant]

I really like the roundabout proposal at Broadway. The weird skewed intersection requires a bigger change to be made safe, and there's space to do it with minimal property takings. I wonder if it could be shifted north or east a little bit to not interfere with the gas station tanks, if that proves to be a problem.

Lowry, though... yikes. I'd be curious to know what the state is using for a design vehicle that differs from what the county (or city?) used for the rebuilt part of Broadway between Stinson and Industrial. That's only 40' curb to curb by my google maps measurement, 4' narrower than Lowry or University, and has a three-lane profile that semis seem to navigate just fine. It's just not going to work to not have left turn lanes at that intersection.

That's a good point about the medians, though I really like them at the 18th Ave trail crossing and the 22nd Ave intersection. The latter isn't even so much about pedestrian crossings for me as to block drivers from doing dumb crossing maneuvers at the one offset intersection on the corridor.

[Wezle]

Found the what I assume to be 30% plans for Central Ave reconstruction coming in 2028 on the Minneapolis LIMS.

https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/download ... layout.pdf

[Nick]

Febuary

[COLSLAW5]

I really like that we are doing these road diets with better ped bike and bus infrastructure. But we need to move onto the next steps of better intersection design. Raised crosswalks and other treatments to better protect people from turning onto and off this road. Also raised intersection make winter so much better for pedestrians as you don't have to hop over slushy puddles at ever intersection.

This is only 30% so maybe more is to come as they get further into design

[Wezle]

I'm personally hoping that they go with the options that include raised medians for a lot of low traffic intersections, that'll really help out with removing a lot of conflict points. I do agree that raised crosswalks are the next step.

[wingedmolotov]

Hennepin County is seeking preliminary public engagement for reconstruction of Nicollet Avenue between American Boulevard and Old Shakopee Road in Bloomington: https://beheardhennepin.org/nicollet-bloomington

I personally would like this to demonstrate what high-quality infrastructure could look like so that it hopefully spreads to other parts of the city.

[COLSLAW5]

They should look to the Nicollet ave project they just finalized in Richfield. I know their city has a lot more interest in safe street design and they are putting up money for a lot of the street features but would be great to see this just copied down into Bloomington. Raised crosswalks, roundabouts and grade separated bike lanes

https://mc-379cbd4e-be3f-43d7-8383-5433 ... 47A77C601A

[Mdcastle]

I went in and said a few things (under my LivingGhost371 screen name that I'm transitioning to online after getting doxxed on Reddit under my old one).

As a dissenting opinion I'm OK with single lane roundabouts in a car. I absolutely hate multi-lane roundabouts in a car, or any roundabout on my bicycle or on foot.