Street, Road and Highway Projects

[Tcmetro]

The next round of corridors of commerce projects were announced by MnDot recently:

- Design work for 169 bridge replacement in Hopkins/Edina over Nine Mile Creek
- Design work for 35W bridge replacement over the Minnesota River
- Design work for 35W MnPass lanes in the northern suburbs
- Design funding for re-decking of 3rd Ave bridge in Minneapolis
- Partial funding for reconstructing Snelling north of I-94
- Design work for I-94 between Minneapolis and St Paul including MnPass lanes

http://mn.gov/governor/images/2014_10_0 ... ojects.pdf

[Wedgeguy]

I'm taking that the 3rd Ave bridge is the one over the Mississippi River connecting Central Ave to 3rd Ave. All on the list are things that need to be done.

[Tom H.]

Good to see a list of much-needed maintenance projects, rather than speculative expansion projects.

[Silophant]

I'm taking that the 3rd Ave bridge is the one over the Mississippi River connecting Central Ave to 3rd Ave. All on the list are things that need to be done.

Correct. It's always confused me that the bridge is named after 3rd instead of Central. It seems that Central is the more important street in the regional scheme.

[David Greene]

I'm taking that the 3rd Ave bridge is the one over the Mississippi River connecting Central Ave to 3rd Ave. All on the list are things that need to be done.

Correct. It's always confused me that the bridge is named after 3rd instead of Central. It seems that Central is the more important street in the regional scheme.

Originally it was known as the St. Anthony Falls Bridge, which seems a better name to me.

[twincitizen]

Perhaps, but the new 35W bridge now holds that name: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35wbridge-new/

I think 3rd Avenue through downtown should just be renamed Central Ave. It dead-ends at the curve in 35W in Whittier, south of the MIA, so you don't have to worry about any awkward transitions. This would help out with confusion in downtown as well, giving a consistent street name across the river and eliminating any possible confusion between 3rd Avenue S and 3rd Avenue N.

[mattaudio]

That's a good idea, at least south to the Convention Center curves.

[RailBaronYarr]

Good to see a list of much-needed maintenance projects, rather than speculative expansion projects.

Agreed. Too bad it took the State authorizing $300m in debt to do it rather than just having the stones to raise the gas tax.

[MNdible]

I'm not at all opposed to raising the gas tax, but I'll just note that there's absolutely nothing wrong with issuing bonds to pay for long-lived capital projects like roads and bridges, especially ones that benefit a broad public good.

[mattaudio]

Good to see a list of much-needed maintenance projects, rather than speculative expansion projects.

The largest Corridors of Commerce project, by far, is a $45 million four lane expansion of MN 371 from rural Nisswa to rural Jenkins.

[Tom H.]

Good to see a list of much-needed maintenance projects, rather than speculative expansion projects.

The largest Corridors of Commerce project, by far, is a $45 million four lane expansion of MN 371 from rural Nisswa to rural Jenkins.

Oh - I should have followed the link. I assumed the projects listed were a complete list.

ETA: Holy cow! That MN371 project is almost twice as expensive as all of the other projects combined.

[froggie]

I think 3rd Avenue through downtown should just be renamed Central Ave.

"Central", just like "Main", implies a "0 Ave" or "1st Ave" in a streetnaming system involving numbers. Renaming 3rd Ave S as Central Ave would create more confusion than it would solve.

ETA: Holy cow! That MN371 project is almost twice as expensive as all of the other projects combined.

The 371 project is also a major construction project with some wetland mitigation. Most of the rest of the projects are planning projects rather than actual construction.

[Mdcastle]

And this is just part of the funding for the first phase, and presumably doesn't include the interchange that Pequot Lakes and Crow Wing County want. Worthwhile investments in our infrastructure are expensive...

[go4guy]

Moving over from the Armory thread. I dont understand the cheap repairs that MnDot does. Like patching a concrete freeway with asphalt. Or in the case of 394, completely covering concrete with asphalt. Just crappy, and it never lasts.

[sad panda]

Moving over from the Armory thread. I dont understand the cheap repairs that MnDot does. Like patching a concrete freeway with asphalt. Or in the case of 394, completely covering concrete with asphalt. Just crappy, and it never lasts.

In the case of 394, neighbors complained about the noise of the concrete, hence the asphalt coating.

[mattaudio]

Moving over from the Armory thread. I dont understand the cheap repairs that MnDot does. Like patching a concrete freeway with asphalt. Or in the case of 394, completely covering concrete with asphalt. Just crappy, and it never lasts.

In the case of all other examples, it's because the public and politicians are chomping at the bit for expanded roadway capacity, forcing MnDOT's hand. So we get popup projects to expand capacity in a way that will not last, making the maintenance bill even worse in a shorter timeframe.

[froggie]

If you're referring to an asphalt overlay on the concrete east of Hwy 100, that's not entirely out of the ordinary. It's fairly common for concrete to receive its first major maintenance at around the 25 year mark, whether it be diamond grinding, or some sort of grinding followed by an asphalt overlay. That concrete was built ca. 1988-89 from Wirth Pkwy east, so that concrete is at the 25-26 year mark.

That said, I'm not sure if what I described is what MnDOT is doing.

[Anondson]

With 394 east of TH100, the residents along then highway 12 were promised that 394 would not be noisy and were promised a certain dB level of noise. After 394 was completed the residents were very upset with the noise the concrete caused, they went as far as hired their own audio experts to drive with mics by car tires to prove it failed to meet the dB level of noise promised.

MNDoT's response was to cover it with a new layer of asphalt. At the time MNDoT hadn't invented the now-common techniques of brushing in patterns to the concrete that reduce the noise.

It's probably cheaper to continue slapping more asphalt on to 394 at this point, but I always wondered now that we have methods of grinding concrete with quieting patterns if we could just scrape the asphalt off and grind in the quieting patterns into the concrete...

[mattaudio]

Not sure if it was posted on here, and I guess it's only armchair activism, but I challenged the "accident" word in an article about the boy who was nearly killed crossing the Rice Street Death Road™ last week. She followed up by writing "Is a car crash ever an accident" http://www.startribune.com/local/east/280999802.html noting that the Strib is considering an editorial policy on this.

Today, a group "We Save Lives" issued a letter to the Strib urging them to change. http://wesavelives.org/letter-minneapolis-star-tribune/

Yet their issues are drunk/drugged/distracted driving. While I'm obviously against those things, I hope they don't dominate the conversation about road incidents, because that limits how we see these as preventable. At least the letter was signed by someone with "Keep Kids Alive Drive 25." But the reality is that we need to focus on the everyday driver - who is likely speeding - and the everyday unsafe road which is designed to kill people who aren't in a big steel cage. Hopefully we can elevate the discussion.

[Mdcastle]

Putting an asphalt overlay on I-394 east of Penn was part of the compromise to allow it to be restriped for three general purpose lanes in each direction.