urbanMSP

I hope there are stronger ped/bike connections across the highway at this point. The relatively new tight diamond at Wooddale is not super friendly for those who are crossing the bridge over Hwy 7.

I hope there are stronger ped/bike connections across the highway at this point. The relatively new tight diamond at Wooddale is not super friendly for those who are crossing the bridge over Hwy 7.

Especially during rush hour. You really take your life in your hands crossing the bridge.
According to the layout it looks as though the ped/bike trail will at least be separated from the roadway, but they cross the entrance and exit ramps just outside the roundabouts. I guess I haven't had to maneuver the roundabouts on a bike, so I don't know how dicey that can get.

When we turn a road into a freeway incrementally, as is being done to Hwy 7 west of 100, we miss some opportunities. Would it have made sense to move the Hwy 7 grade down into some sort of trench? Would that allow for things like ped bridges to reconnect the grid across Hwy 7?
Is this the best we can do for a "new" freeway crossing between two urban neighborhoods? http://goo.gl/maps/fnxY3

They could add some breathing room to those bike lanes on the Wooddale overpass if they got rid of those pointless medians. Do those serve any purpose whatsoever except to make people feel like they can drive faster?

Medians like that keep cars in their own lane at slow city street speeds and discourage illegal U-turns and make it more obvious where the centerline is if the road has snow on it.

I don't really have any defense of the Wooddale project since it wouldn't have made things worse for cars if they had a wider shoulder or a cycletrack for bicycles. I'm kind of ambivalent about these pop-up-projects since although any capacity improvement anywhere is very welcome to me, and these are the major way we're getting meaningful capacity expansion, I find they're problematic in that they tend to be done on the cheap, and without a lot of long term planning for either before or after.

The new Wooddale intersection is TERRIBLE. If exiting onto Wooddale from 7 West, you basically have to take over the crosswalk in order to see if traffic is coming from the left. The center left turn lanes onto 7 are very quick and not well designed. Who in the world designed this thing?

Is 7 going to trench under Louisiana? Are they going to shave down that hill west of Louisiana?

Medians like that keep cars in their own lane at slow city street speeds and discourage illegal U-turns and make it more obvious where the centerline is if the road has snow on it.

Don't medians do the exact opposite of slowing cars down? When you can see on-coming vehicles and know there's a chance something can happen, you're more alert to entire surroundings (including one's own position in their lane) and drive slower to avoid being unable to react in time due to high speeds. Am I crazy?

The new Wooddale intersection is TERRIBLE. If exiting onto Wooddale from 7 West, you basically have to take over the crosswalk in order to see if traffic is coming from the left. The center left turn lanes onto 7 are very quick and not well designed. Who in the world designed this thing?

The initial design called for stop lights at the ramps, but at a meeting this summer for the Hwy 100 project I asked if there was any intention to put those in and they said probably not.
From what I understood, they hadn't anticipated the number of vehicles that use the 36th St exit from Hwy 100-Wooddale Ave- Hwy 7 to avoid traffic and skip the exit at 7 and 100. I think they feel it will improve after 100 is widened and the bridges and reconfigured ramps are done.

Medians like that keep cars in their own lane at slow city street speeds and discourage illegal U-turns and make it more obvious where the centerline is if the road has snow on it.

Don't medians do the exact opposite of slowing cars down? When you can see on-coming vehicles and know there's a chance something can happen, you're more alert to entire surroundings (including one's own position in their lane) and drive slower to avoid being unable to react in time due to high speeds. Am I crazy?

That's not what I meant. At fast highway speeds they're pretty much useless, which is why you see Jersey Barriers and such, at slow city street speeds, say 40 mph or less they're enough to bump errant cars back into their lane.

That is about the only tight diamond I've ever seen without traffic signals. Normally if an area is dense enough to need retaining walls there's enough traffic to warrant traffic signals at the ramps.

The ramp from 7 to MN 100 southbound strikes me as a death trap so I'm not surprised people use Wooddale instead.

Is 7 going to trench under Louisiana? Are they going to shave down that hill west of Louisiana?

To repeat, TH7 is being returned to be elevated over Louisiana. It'll be elevated on a berm from the hill to the west to the hill to the east like it was 30 years ago.

any aerials of what it used to look like? I had never heard of it being elevated before.

Technically, it wasn't elevated over Louisiana, its didn't exist there. It passed over a rail corridor/ trench. Louisiana didn't connect to 7 until the early 90s.

Oh wow, that Skunk Hollow spur used to make almost a complete circle, then had another spur going off of it to what looks like a scrap yard.

http://www.historicaerials.com/aerials. ... &year=1947

MHAPO seems to be down in the area, but historic aerials has it-

http://www.historicaerials.com/aerials. ... &year=1979

Technically, it wasn't elevated over Louisiana, its didn't exist there. It passed over a rail corridor/ trench. Louisiana didn't connect to 7 until the early 90s.

It wasn't officially Louisiana, but in the past Louisiana zigged over to Monitor, which passed under 7 where the rail used to be, then drivers simply followed Lake a half block back to Louisiana. Drove it all the time in the 80s.

There was a decades long project creating Louisiana to be a complete arterial from the north to the south, SLP never had one, but had numerous arterials from east-west. It was built in pieces through the old superfund areas. In the 80s a two lane stretch was run under 7 where the old rail underpass went. Dangerous as hell. But from Walker to Minnetonka, and Lake to Excelsior, Louisiana was a median separated four lane road.

IMO, the city would have been wise to turn the four lane stretch of Louisiana into a two lane with cycle tracks replacing a lane, that way Louisiana would be two lane from north to south entirely. Would have made these traffic circles going in at 7 a lot easier for locals to use if it wasn't moving four lanes through.

Medians like that keep cars in their own lane at slow city street speeds and discourage illegal U-turns and make it more obvious where the centerline is if the road has snow on it.

I guarantee there will be 10x more crashes where a car sideswipes a bike in the current configuration with 4' bike lanes than there would be head-on collisions if there was a double solid yellow line instead of the medians. But we all know who MnDot designs roads for. Anyway the area with the most turning conflicts uses a painted median. Someone was clearly just checking boxes in a manual here.

The highway overpass in the past week has been opened to all lanes on both directions, east and west. The off ramps to Louisiana are still incomplete while the multiple roundabouts are being completed.

I drive through here on Louisiana five days a week and it is already glorious not having to stop for the traffic light for what was once seemingly five minutes, gliding through the partially built traffic circles.

1 lane each east and west for most of October while they finish the median. West 7 to north Louisiana ramp is open, other 3 are closed.

Costs have risen because . . . wait for it . . . contaminated soils. And no one is surprised, but wishes it could have been spotted before construction began.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2014/10/19/cont ... ouis-park/

Otherwise, all is on schedule for ramps and interchanges to be open by mid-November.

With the 100/7 interchange completed, speed limits on 7 between Texas and 100 have been increased from 45 to 55 (with most drivers traveling 60-65 IMO).

This speed increase has made the stoplight at Texas that much more of a problem. Getting cars to stop after they fly up over the hill at the new faster speeds is treacherous, especially with traffic stopped at the light. It’s an even worse mix now.

I’m not saying this bad mix is the factor but a pedestrian crossing 7 at Texas was just killed by a driver tonight.

http://www.startribune.com/pedestrian-h ... 474245343/