Interstate 94

[Silophant]

It did happen when 35W was closed, though. Park and Portland got their buffered bike lanes turned into overflow lanes, and even so I heard a lot from my south metro coworkers about how bad Lyndale and Blaisdell were for those years.

[thespeedmccool]

To be fair, if the removal of 94 were permanent, there would be greater incentive for people to find a fundamentally different way into the city vis-a-vis a temporary construction project.

Two things I feel I have to point out despite the fact that I don't really support removing 94:

• A lot of people drive because driving is easy. Make it harder and there will be less people driving. I know we all know about induced demand, but we have to be careful not to fall into unscientific and inflammatory talk about "125k cars on city streets." That won't happen because, as has been pointed out, removing the freeway would reduce demand for road capacity.
• That said, the idea that these suburbanites would somehow try to force their way longterm down Marshall or University is not realistic. They would almost certainly divert to 62 or 36 and use 55 or 35W, or 35E or 5, which is probably about 10x more likely than them parking their SUVs in ramps and waiting for the nonexistent train to take them into the city.

Is that a desirable outcome? Making hundreds of thousands of monied, cranky suburbanites pissed off and - however marginally - worse off, while 95% of the diverted traffic gets shoved through other urban neighborhoods?

The political constituency to be "worried about" is not the St. Paulites who lazily use the freeway to travel four blocks (if that's even a substantial group at all,) but the gobs of people travelling from the west to St. Paul or the east to Minneapolis. That group is monied and vocal, and they absolutely will not accept a morning commute viscerally lengthened by state policy. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned or justified the removal is; you are guaranteeing that hundreds of thousands of suburbanites would be livid.

Until 80% of Twin Citizens are taking trains into work, removing 94 is not happening, and probably not even then. Freeways were a mistake, but there's literally no larger or more well-resourced constituency than drivers in America.

[Tom H.]

Certainly *most* of the trips on 94 through this stretch are local, but the long-distance traffic isn't zero. Certainly some of those long-distance travellers could re-route along the 494/694 loop, 62, 36, etc. Maybe not a huge effect, but not negligible either.

Additionally, for those of us who ascribe to induced demand, there will/would be reduced demand / "trip evaporation" during construction and/or closure. It's probably very hard to disentangle it from mode switching, but again, it's a non-zero factor.

Personally I'm in favor of freeway capping, limiting access and adding BRT. Full freeway removal will require a careful navigation and bulding up of political capital in addition to the technical challenges. I feel like I-94 in North Minneapolis has a good case to be the flagship freeway removal. Removing 35W from DT Mpls to 36/280 would be nice too, if the Spaghetti Junction could go away with it.

[daveybabymsp]

Certainly *most* of the trips on 94 through this stretch are local, but the long-distance traffic isn't zero. Certainly some of those long-distance travellers could re-route along the 494/694 loop, 62, 36, etc. Maybe not a huge effect, but not negligible either.

Additionally, for those of us who ascribe to induced demand, there will/would be reduced demand / "trip evaporation" during construction and/or closure. It's probably very hard to disentangle it from mode switching, but again, it's a non-zero factor.

Personally I'm in favor of freeway capping, limiting access and adding BRT. Full freeway removal will require a careful navigation and bulding up of political capital in addition to the technical challenges. I feel like I-94 in North Minneapolis has a good case to be the flagship freeway removal. Removing 35W from DT Mpls to 36/280 would be nice too, if the Spaghetti Junction could go away with it.

Agree with all this. I am torn between whether the effort to remove this stretch of 94 benefits the removal movement by starting a discussion that the region hasn’t seriously had before, making it easier to remove a different freeway even if this one doesn’t succeed. Or if it harms the movement by focusing on a freeway that people see as absolutely essential, making it seem like proponents are unserious/radical to the general population and therefore turning them against the whole concept of highway removal even for more “politically viable” projects.


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[amiller92]

It did happen when 35W was closed, though. Park and Portland got their buffered bike lanes turned into overflow lanes, and even so I heard a lot from my south metro coworkers about how bad Lyndale and Blaisdell were for those years.

I think there are real differences in traffic reactions between temporary, planned, unplanned and permanent closures (vague sense some snippets of research). Living near Cedar Avenue I can generally tell when 35W is closed for some reason and having bike commuted on Park/Portland during construction, it isn't anywhere near one-to-one. As to the latter, those actually levelled off eventually after the initial adjustment.

A thing about 94 is a large percentage of those trips are short, just an exist or two. Those trips would generally be a lot better served by a street grid than a hop on and off a freeway.

[amiller92]

Agree with all this. I am torn between whether the effort to remove this stretch of 94 benefits the removal movement by starting a discussion that the region hasn’t seriously had before, making it easier to remove a different freeway even if this one doesn’t succeed. Or if it harms the movement by focusing on a freeway that people see as absolutely essential, making it seem like proponents are unserious/radical to the general population and therefore turning them against the whole concept of highway removal even for more “politically viable” projects.


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At minimum, it gives us the opportunity to discuss the ongoing harm that an urban freeway continues to do to its neighbors, which goes far beyond the initial trench digging.

[EOst]

I think there are real differences in traffic reactions between temporary, planned, unplanned and permanent closures (vague sense some snippets of research). Living near Cedar Avenue I can generally tell when 35W is closed for some reason and having bike commuted on Park/Portland during construction, it isn't anywhere near one-to-one. As to the latter, those actually levelled off eventually after the initial adjustment.

A thing about 94 is a large percentage of those trips are short, just an exist or two. Those trips would generally be a lot better served by a street grid than a hop on and off a freeway.

All of this is true, but the relatively high traffic capacity of the Park/Portland pair helps to disguise a lot of what is happening. There's nowhere to hide local traffic impacts on the parallel streets in St. Paul; Larpenteur, University, and St. Anthony/Concordia (which of course both go away in this model) are the only multi-lane east/west arterials between the river and the suburbs. Everything else is a narrow 2- or 3-lane road with lots of transit and pedestrians. Even University, which has some excess capacity, isn't an ideal substitute because of light rail operations and the density of pedestrians.

[BigIdeasGuy]

If removal was ever really on the table, not sure it ever was, it died quickly when activists demanded it while also tacking on a bunch of progressive policy items that while mostly good had little to do with the actual issue. It gave serious and powerful people a reason to dismiss them out of hand vs actually looking at it. Giving reasonable people a reason to dismiss you before you ever get in front of them is never an effective idea while trying to build support. They should have focused on the harm 94 causes to local communities, tried to force leaders to agree with that and then go from there.

I generally agree with Tom's point of capping, limiting access, adding BRT (I would prefer LRT but that's dead), limiting access, etc.

I also agree that 94 through N MPLS is probably the better case to make the fill in the trench argument. I think it's a much easier sell if only for you can say to drivers of "don't worry you still have 100/169/494"

[MNdible]

I have no idea about actual vehicle counts, but when 35W was under construction through south Minneapolis (not fully closed), the traffic impacts were very significant on all of the parallel surface streets. It was a major relief for the surrounding residents to have that work completed.

[StandishGuy]

It seems odd that nearly all of the MNDOT's options for freeway designs include just 3 transit stops along the route. They mention potential locations of Dale, Snelling and 25th/ 27th. If these designs are preliminary, why is 3 stops the magic number? I suspect MNDOT staff and the consultants want to make sure they don't have to design any more stops than this, but it seems arbitrary and very much limits the connections for transit riders. For that matter, it isn't clear why MNDOT also has chosen buses as the preferred mode for the corridor. A heavy rail metro would do a great job of moving 100,000 actual people per day along the corridor at a speed far higher than the Green Line.

Moving cars is and always will be the highest priority for MNDOT despite rhetoric about prioritizing transit. I can't believe they are even presenting options with shoulder bus lanes in 2023. Geez.

[Korh]

There's an easy way to reduce demand on 94 to justify getting rid of a few lanes.
Fully toll it between the two downtowns, although that might be the single option that would piss everyone off.

[COLSLAW5]

Also how much of that traffic would be rerouted to the 694 bypass anyway. Also the claim is that many people are making local trips, by filling it in you can reconnect the street grid which would allow for much more dispersion of traffic as well.

[bubzki2]

I can say from actual experience that when I-94 in the city is closed, it is actually really easy to route around it. My takeaway is that we have severely overbuilt urban freeways.

[twincitizen]

Personally I'm in favor of freeway capping, limiting access and adding BRT. Full freeway removal will require a careful navigation and bulding up of political capital in addition to the technical challenges. I feel like I-94 in North Minneapolis has a good case to be the flagship freeway removal. Removing 35W from DT Mpls to 36/280 would be nice too, if the Spaghetti Junction could go away with it.

Agree with all this. I am torn between whether the effort to remove this stretch of 94 benefits the removal movement by starting a discussion that the region hasn’t seriously had before, making it easier to remove a different freeway even if this one doesn’t succeed. Or if it harms the movement by focusing on a freeway that people see as absolutely essential, making it seem like proponents are unserious/radical to the general population and therefore turning them against the whole concept of highway removal even for more “politically viable” projects.

It seems pretty clear to me that Our Streets is devoting a massive chunk of their staff capacity and political capital to this one, probably unattainable thing, over taking on a half-dozen or so smaller removal projects. I am encouraged by their approach on Olson Hwy ("Bring Back 6th" campaign) and would like to see more targeted campaigns like that.

Here are some examples:
*394 ramps to Washington (recently got a band-aid of slightly better crosswalks, ramps could've been removed entirely)
*MN-121 removal (proposed to get a similar band-aid soon, should be removed, re-gridded, etc.)
*Could've improved Hiawatha intersections considerably when MnDOT repaved everything between 26th and 46th AS-IS last year
*North Loop viaducts (Seems like there was more enthusiasm for this a decade ago than today?)
*Stopping the freeway-ing/expansion of MN-252 in Brooklyn Center (not sure if MnDOT is still pursuing full freeway, post-COVID?)
*Others?

[Tom H.]

Completely agree with the list above. Can't remember who made them, but there were Google Maps-ified mockups of a regridded North Loop without the viaducts, and a re-gridded CSAH-122 (35W / 4th St spaghetti). Those would be such huge improvments, at the cost of much less political capital.

Can I include what are effectively surface freeways in the form of the Lake/Lagoon one-way pairs and the 6-lane Lake St west of there?

[Silophant]

The fact that there wasn't (as far as I know) a peep of opposition to turning the outer lanes of that section of Lake into bus lanes with the B Line is a good indicator of how overbuilt it is.

[twincitizen]

Something that would be pretty critically important to do as a pre-requisite to reducing traffic in the 94 corridor between the downtowns (up to and including replacement with a surface boulevard) is to first remove the ramps connecting 394 to 94, especially from eastbound 394 to eastbound 94 due to the insane backups on 394, and how it adds to congestion on 94 eastbound into the tunnel.

Given how bad of a pinch point that is, those ramp connections probably never should have been added in the first place. I-394 always should have been seen as a convenient way into downtown from the west metro / US-12 corridor, and not as another piece of the regional freeway network for someone from the east metro to work in SLP/Minnetonka.

Those connections, congested as they are (especially eastbound), have allowed and incentivized travel between the western suburbs and St. Paul. Seems likely that lots of St. Paul residents work for employers located along 394, and likely plenty of state gov't workers live out along 394. Not great personal life choices, but this connection, however congested, enables that choice. While I have my reservations about Twin Cities Boulevard, I have fewer reservations about simply disconnecting 394 from the rest of the metro freeway network, or at least to eastbound 94.

[amiller92]

*MN-121 removal (proposed to get a similar band-aid soon, should be removed, re-gridded, etc.)

This one is such a no-brainer.

But in defense of Our Streets, 94 is scheduled for work whether they advocate for something better or not.

[Tom H.]

Don't you need like a special dispensation to *not* have full movement connections wherever two Interstate routes intersect? Especially when a 3-digit meets its parent. (Of course, an "interstate" running from Minnetonka to Minneapolis is maybe not exactly what Eisenhower had in mind.)

[bubzki2]

A lot of off-topic conversation here. It's not a zero-sum game. Do all the above low-hanging fruit improvements AND make 94 less of a car sewer.