Trade Ayd Mill and 35E for calmed Snelling?

[Vagueperson]

I am far from an expert or even amarm chair expert on these issues, but as I considered the strange situation of 35E and Snelling I wondered why we don't just switch the use of these roads. Could we reduce the truck traffic and overall volume of Snelling by allowing trucks on 35E and building out the Ayd Mill connection to west-bound 94? If it would work I think it may be worthwhile to make Snelling, which traverses many neighborhoods of the city, into a more livable space. Ayd Mill, on the other hand, is already isolated from important commercial mainstreets for the most part. With MNDot wanting to give up jurisdiction over Snelling, it seems like there could be political will behind reducing its current role.

[mattaudio]

I think this could be a great option and have proposed it for years. A three lane Snelling with pedestrians first, in exchange for an Ayd Mill connection... let a street be a street and let a road be a road.

[Wedgeguy]

I am far from an expert or even amarm chair expert on these issues, but as I considered the strange situation of 35E and Snelling I wondered why we don't just switch the use of these roads. Could we reduce the truck traffic and overall volume of Snelling by allowing trucks on 35E and building out the Ayd Mill connection to west-bound 94? If it would work I think it may be worthwhile to make Snelling, which traverses many neighborhoods of the city, into a more livable space. Ayd Mill, on the other hand, is already isolated from important commercial mainstreets for the most part. With MNDot wanting to give up jurisdiction over Snelling, it seems like there could be political will behind reducing its current role.

The only issue is getting the state to drop highway 51 which runs from 694 in Arden Hills to Montreal and W 7th in St. Paul. Whether we like it or not a majority of the road runs and supports a commercial corridor where trucks will have to run. Once you get south of Grand in St. Paul then the road turns more into a neighborhood street, but north of Grand it is 90% commercial thru that corridor. I do not see trucks going out of their way to take 35E and Ayd Mills if they are coming in from the SW on 5.

[Mikey]

Trucks coming from the SW on Hwy 5 currently (officially) have to take a 270º left turn onto Montreal and head up the big hill to take Hwy 51 north. Shifting MN 51 to Ayd Mill south of 94, coupled with shifting MN 5 to Shepard Rd and adding loop ramps to Shepard Rd / 35E makes too much pragmatic sense.

Unfortunately, it's probably politically impossible.

[froggie]

For the record, current state law prohibits MnDOT from dropping or rerouting 51 south of University. This was pushed and put in by some neighborhood activists (who apparently didn't live along Lexington) to try and prevent connections from Ayd Mill to either 35E or 94. I believe R.I.P. 35E (who was opposed to I-35E construction) was instrumental in getting this restriction into law.

The idea of trading Ayd Mill for a calmed Snelling has merit, and Matt and I have talked about it in the past. It would require two things though: a better (and more direct) connection between Ayd Mill and Snelling to the north, and a change in state law. And if we want to drop lanes from Snelling, it would likely require retaining Ayd Mill as 4 lanes, though it'd take a full traffic study to figure that out for sure.

[Anondson]

It would be fascinating to tally the number of statutes (and other techniques) the MN legislature created to prevent transportation improvements.

We have this with Snelling. We have the ban on studying the Dan Patch line for commuter rail—which missed the language to ban intercity rail, revealing the weakness of legislating things not to happen, you must imagine all the words.

Maybe not even a list, maybe make it a series of posts on streets.mn or MinnPost.

[Wedgeguy]

We think NIMBYISM is bad in constructing a build or house, Transportation projects take it to a whole new level. I lived in St. Paul thru much of the biggest Ayd Mills brew haha. You actually had at least 3 different groups of neighborhood that were competing against each other to get different results that countered each other. I always said that Ayd Mills would make for an excellent graduate paper for a transportation major.

You had the people on the north end that both wanted the road (94) to connect to Ayd Mills and those who did not. A majority on the south wanted it connected to (35E) to relieve the commuter traffic going thru their neighborhood roads. Those living along Lexington and Snelling wanted it connected to get some relief from the growing traffic nightmares that were causing gridlock during morning and evening commutes. Those along the trench wanted a linear park that would have had a major and busy rail line running thru it. That would have caused even more traffic on Snelling and Lexington and other neighborhood street. Needless to say, that them Mayor Mark Kelly decided to do a year long study with one of the alternatives for Ayd Mills that opened the south end up, got rid of a few entrance and exits to Ayd Mills, but kept traffic still going thru Selby and Snelling to I-94. You would have thought that the world was coming to an end when he did that. That life in the area would go to hell in a hand basket. Now close to 20 years later we find that the world did not end. Property values did not plummet. But the north end at Selby and Snelling is still a nightmare because it was one of those areas that did not see any changes and thing just kept building. We will see what Vintage does to that intersection. Maybe now with the new soccer stadium and road work that will have to be done to support that. We will see some way to integrate Ayd Mills with 94 and Snelling. I can guarantee you that there will be lots of views that contradict each other being put on the table. But unlike the last Ayd Mills issues it will not take 20+ years of arguing to get a solution implemented. The Ayd Mills controversy has been going on since the mid 60's and maybe earlier when they were looking to run I-35E thru St. Paul. Anyone who has a different take on what happened can sure add their opinion here too. Just thought I would try and enlighten those who were not old enough to know about or even care about it. It made some lawyers very rich.