Ayd Mill Road

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
nate
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby nate » March 29th, 2019, 8:16 pm

Either way, I live in Midway and it is my route to anywhere in Bloomington or southwestern suburbs
This is going to veer off topic, and yeah, I know I'm a weirdo who avoids suburbs, but those places are way closer to me than they are to you and I like never go there. Do you make a lot of trips from Midway to Bloomington or the southwest suburbs, and if so, why? Would you still make them if AMR wasn't there?
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sdho
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby sdho » March 30th, 2019, 10:09 am

St. Paul is a city with significant tax base issues. It's nuts that it is willingly maintaining what should be a state road in the first place. Removing taxable property from the rolls while further decreasing the value of homes adjacent to Ayd Mill Road, and all at great one-time and ongoing expense, is even nuttier.
Just to be clear -- under no circumstances do I think the City of St Paul should pay for an extension to 94. That should be part of a negotiation for another agency to take it over. But I disagree that "removing taxable property" is the only part of the equation.

There's no doubt that freeways reduce the physical area of land available for development, but the idea that freeways degrade the value of surrounding land depends a ton on what you do with it. Because they're fully developed and the turnover cycle is slow, older cities are often not a position to easily capture the value created by a freeway. But most suburbs show that freeway proximity can increase, not decrease, the value of surrounding land and the intensity of use.

Would something like Normandale Lakes Office Park have made any sense as a land use without improved Hwys 100 and 494? Or the West End or Park Center in St. Louis Park? Or Rosedale? Or Woodbury's broad Tamarack-Radio area? Intensity exists in all of these places because of the freeway network.

St. Paul's list of examples is thinner, but I believe land uses like Spruce Tree Center or even the new stadium would not have happened if not for access to 94. (Obviously Green Line also a major factor in the new stuff.) Does a freeway -- either existing or short extension have to be a drain on the surrounding land use?

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Anondson » March 30th, 2019, 11:59 am

Having once live a couple houses from Snelling and Selby, I’m able to argue both sides. But because Snelling is a state highway and truck route, that strongly limits what will ever be done to make the stretch south of 94 ever be a livable section.

One argument that had been particularly compelling was that if connecting Ayd Mill to 94 would guarantee truck through traffic was diverted to AMR off Snelling, I could see the loss of tax paying properties made up by increases in value to tax paying property on Snelling south of 94 and the neighborhood nodes could finally get safer designs that don’t prioritize semi truck throughput.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Mikey » March 30th, 2019, 1:02 pm

Here's my idea, free to use: instead of extending AMR north along the Albert St alignment, use Pascal.

Raise AMR in intersect Selby OVER the tracks, then continue along Pascal's alignment to 94. Rebuild the Snelling / 94 interchange as a split diamond at Snelling / Pascal, and remove the WB off-ramp to Hamline. This directs north/south traffic directly onto AMR, no jog on Snelling and Selby and/or Marshall. Unlike the Albert St alignment, does not require another bridge over 94 and connects directly to University Ave as well. It would probably require removing the 5 houses on the west side of Pascal

And please, trade AMR and Shepard to the state; Snelling (at least south of 94), West 7th, East 7th / Stillwater Rd, and Arcade to the city and/or county
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alexschief
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby alexschief » March 30th, 2019, 3:56 pm

I feel like we're in the 1970's again. Let's recap:

Connecting AMR to 94 would:
(1) Destroy tax-paying property
(2) Induce more traffic, causing increases in carbon emissions and increases in airborne particulates
(3) Add to the road maintenance costs of the owning authority, which is already short on cash (whether the city or the state)
(4) Be expensive in up front costs

All for the benefit of a couple minutes of travel time savings at non-peak hours and a shifting of the traffic sewer at Snelling-Selby?

The traffic sewer at Snelling-Selby could also be fixed by removing the road entirely. The costs of a few extra minutes of travel time would be borne almost entirely by highway-to-highway travelers, and the removal of Ayd Mill Road might cause shifts in travel behavior that discourage some of those trips regardless. We've seen example after example of how freeway closures lead to the traffic just evaporating. San Francisco saw this with the Embarcadero and the Central Expressway. Milwaukee saw it with Park East, New York saw it temporarily with the West Side landslide closure. Seoul removed an expressway, daylighted a stream, and now it's one of the most famous parks in the world.

St. Paul could do the same if it chose. Ayd Mill Road is extraordinarily low hanging fruit, with ADT just a fraction of the metro's actual interstates, the road in terrible condition, and owned by a city and not a highway-mad DOT. This should not be a tough call.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Anondson » March 30th, 2019, 4:40 pm

All for the benefit of a couple minutes of travel time savings at non-peak hours and a shifting of the traffic sewer at Snelling-Selby?
And being able to put pedestrians first in Snelling corridor design.
Realistically, would a DOT eliminate this stretch of Snelling as a truck route?
Until Snelling is no longer a state highway under MNDOT jurisdiction and a designated truck route from 94 to Montreal will never be designed for pedestrian safety. St. Paul gets no say in diverting trucks off state highways.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Trademark » March 31st, 2019, 12:56 pm

What if Ayd Mill Road becomes the continuation of MN-51 or MN-280 so it has state funding. Connect it to I-94. Then traffic calm Snelling south of I-94 with a turnback. And either make it a 3-Lane road or give it bus lanes for the A-Line.

Ayd Mill can even turn into a Super-2.with merging lanes and a left turn lane for the remaining traffic lights and space could be preserved for future bike trail/rail transit

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Tcmetro » March 31st, 2019, 5:49 pm

I think a two-lane AMR is a great idea. Considering that the ramps to/from 35E are one lane each, I'm not convinced that AMR needs two.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Trademark » March 31st, 2019, 6:15 pm

I think a two-lane AMR is a great idea. Considering that the ramps to/from 35E are one lane each, I'm not convinced that AMR needs two.
It can probably still have a 45 mph speed limit due to its grade separation so the shortcut would still be there as an incentive to keep traffic off the local streets and to justify a state highway designation and if you jus put a long left turn lane going northbound on the traffic lights it wouldnt back up traffic too much waiting for people to get off the road.

at40man
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Re: Ayd Mill Road motor lanes to be reduced, adding bike and ped space

Postby at40man » August 16th, 2019, 12:51 pm

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned here yet - but GREAT news!

https://www.twincities.com/2019/08/16/s ... in-carter/

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby bubzki2 » August 19th, 2019, 8:46 am

^ Less great about it is that Dai Thao is throwing a wrench in it by calling for a traffic study.

at40man
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby at40man » August 26th, 2019, 6:11 pm

Given that Maryland Ave went on a road diet between Johnson and Arkwright with a daily vehicle count of 23,000 with no true adverse affects, and Ayd Mill has a daily traffic count of 24,000 with far fewer stoplights, I think this reconfiguration will be just fine.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Anondson » August 26th, 2019, 10:38 pm

The traffic count is only 24,400 between 35E and St. Clair.
19,900 between St. Clair and Summit.
17,300 between Summit and Hamline.
11,500 between Hamline and Selby.

As long as speeds are kept not too high, then the traffic will flow just fine. If speeds are too high it will be too difficult to turn across the oncoming speeding cars and it will back up horrendously and the backlash will be loud.

Because this is not a truck route (Snelling is the truck route) couldn’t we use the tight traffic circles at the on/off ramps?

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mattaudio
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby mattaudio » August 27th, 2019, 7:18 am

On another note, why oh why is there that loop from eastbound Jefferson to northbound Ayd Mill? I can't find AADT volume for that specific loop ramp, but I have to imagine it's a tiny amount compared to traffic from 35E or from westbound Jefferson. There's already space for a left turn lane for the other ramp, which would make things much safer for people walking/bicycling AND would open up excess ROW for redevelopment. https://goo.gl/maps/NDMaUSH1nUAqVdLr6

EOst
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby EOst » August 27th, 2019, 8:12 am

One or the other ramp (probably the non-loop ramp) will probably be the bike/ped access from Jefferson to the trail. All of the ramps will have to be re-engineered for the project.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby karen nelson » August 29th, 2019, 3:30 pm

Have they considered just closing St Clair entrances/exits and/or Grand to car traffic, just had bike, ped access? Would want to keep Hamline to avoid even mess around Snelby but others access to middle AMR cut off, traffic would probably never go on AMR and get spread over grid.

I would assume vast majority of traffic on AMR is for complete length of it.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby karen nelson » August 29th, 2019, 3:33 pm

How do you get cyclists and peds, coming from the west, safely across to eastern protected bike lanes/walkway?

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mister.shoes
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby mister.shoes » August 29th, 2019, 8:58 pm

I'm but one sparse user (it was more often when my now-wife lived in StP), but I think I've traveled the full length only a handful of times. Virtually every other trip has been between Grand and 35E.
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Didier
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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby Didier » August 30th, 2019, 12:59 am

Making this a two lane road would essentially turn it into a parkway, which is fine, but also maybe not quite enough to address the problem here.

The bigger issue is that Ayd Mill is the most direct passage from 35E to 94, and it likely still would be. So in addition to ripping out two lanes, the road probably needs to really disincentive the end points too, maybe as far as not even connecting to 35E. Otherwise this will turn into a long line of cars every day.

Of course, downplaying the freeway connections creates its own problems, specifically that more traffic will be diverted to the local streets, which isn’t awesome. But it’s also hard to imagine how a proper freeway connection could ever unite 94 and 35E.

And lastly, just an observation as someone who has cruised up Ayd Mill my share of times, cutting the road down to two lanes would leave a ton of space in that corridor. Frankly there’s more than enough space to add a wide pathway now, without removing the road, if we really wanted to. So there’s probably another level of planning needed to really define what this space is going to be.

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Re: Ayd Mill Road

Postby bubzki2 » August 30th, 2019, 8:26 am

Both ends of AMR are single lane. Traffic only flares out midway due to left turns, etc. Putting in proper turn lanes (or roundabouts) at the intersections may actually lead to better flow than at present.


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