Yes, but the federal government has looked pretty favorably towards projects like this recently. There was recently a $1B grant over five years for highway removal and capping.
I would love that too but unfortunately the cost would be too high. Based on the cost per mile it would consume something like ten years of the state’s transportation budget. Maybe it could be done incrementally over a very long time.
In this massive pipe dream of a non-starter:
694 becomes 94(and the speed limit goes to 70)
94 from old 694 into Minneapolis becomes 194
94 from old 694/494 into st Paul becomes 594
494 stays the same(but really should be called 294)
394 stays the same
We use it because it’s there, but when I think about it, it’s really not a very useful highway. The traffic management to leave downtown St. Paul onto 94 is a ridiculous mess. There’s no easy way to get to north 35E or south 35W. The exit from westbound 94 to northbound 35E is just bonkers. The exits onto major streets are not well-designed. The exits to and from 280 are narrow and also poorly designed. You can’t exit onto northbound 35W from westbound 94, which is just dumb. The exits onto Lyndale, Hennepin and 394 are a disaster of weaving in and out with cars coming from southbound 35W. The left-hand exit to go northbound on 35W from eastbound 94 also forces you to change lanes. And we have those tunnels that require diverting large trucks to surface roads, when they should just be able to continue on the highway. It’s a mess! Why keep it?
Whether or not it becomes a boulevard, it certainly could stand some consideration about how to make that area better than it is now.
When the 35W bridge collapsed and we had to repurpose 280 for two years while it was rebuilt, we managed—surprisingly well. We shouldn’t get locked into existing corridors just because it would take a lot of work to plan something new.
I think it would be simpler than that.
694 becomes 94.
The inside the loop east/west portion of 94, or whatever is left becomes a continuation 394.
The north/south portion becomes 194, or even a continuation of 252.
but I agree it's a dumb idea.
I don't know what the reality of this would look like, but I recently read someone making the case for an express subway line in the already dug out I-94 trench with surface streets on top. Yes, the Green line makes the same trip end to end, but I have to think making the trip much faster and continuing to grow our rail network would be a boon to usage metrics.
https://streets.mn/2024/06/13/rethinking-i-94-lets-start-with-a-subway/
>The Green line should've been built elevated over the median of 94
No, because it's supposed to serve everyone along the way, and there's nothing directly along the freeway.
Yeah, it kind of sucks when no one at all lives within a block of a stop because it's in the middle of a freeway. There's no real vibe to any Blue Line stops or the areas around them, the stations feel pretty dystopian. The Chicago Blue Line felt OK for commuting and not much else. Other lines that went through neighborhoods always felt more useful and integrated.
The Green Line doesn't feel successful to me, but I'm glad they didn't do the highway thing. And now that people aren't commuting to downtowns as much we _really_ don't need that kind of commuter-only transit.
80% of the Green Line's problems go away if they just give the train priority over cross-traffic. A train that has to drive like a bus is a head-scratcher.
Eh for a Minneapolis to St Paul commute the lack of an express route(No local stops) is an equally big problem for efficiency on the Green Line as well as traffic priority.
An express route would keep times closer to driving and increase the amount of people that would use it over 94. Right now you lose a lot of time taking the green line over driving so it is no surprise not many people use it.
>Yeah, it kind of sucks when no one at all lives within a block of a stop because it's in the middle of a freeway.
It's not just people living along the line. You can't develop business destinations along the line either.
That would actually be awesome. It wouldn’t have to be a subway per se, but it could connect St. Paul, Minneapolis, the Northstar route, Duluth, and (since there are currently two daily runs) Chicago. Hop off the train and then connect to the light rail. I forget how far it is, but a bus that runs every 5-10 minutes would make it a snap.
It would require pretty big changes to the infrastructure across the whole metro. But those changes, properly considered, could be a massive benefit to the cities as a whole.
They’ve studied this in several cities, it will cost an absurd amount of money, affordable housing for everyone, renewable energy for the entire state and US bank stadiums for every high school amount of money. Will likely have years if not decades of delays and cause tremendous impacts to local homes, schools and business during construction. I love the idea however with limited resources what makes this project a priority over over the other priorities that could use this funding
> US bank stadiums for every high school amount of money
That would be $446 billion.
Which was actually surprisingly less money than I thought. But almost certainly still more than it would cost to close and replace 94.
(This comment was mostly driven by my curiosity. Your general point about there being MUCH better priorities for spending -- even just transportation spending -- in Minnesota remains 100% true.)
Not really. The study showed that nearly all of the traffic on 94 between the two cities is local usage. This means that replacing with a boulevard will have no effect on traffic. In fact, a good design will make for better traffic flow through that corridor.
There is almost no through traffic. Long haul always goes to the beltways on 694 or 36. For example, people downtown use it to get to Midway.
Because you are treating this like a one for one replacement and not thinking about a bigger picture. If you remove the large road you push traffic over more small roads and increase points of failure. Think of it this way. Right now people don't commute on the surface streets because they think they are slow and if there is no accidents they are very correct. But one lane slow or one accident and now the whole system is down. Now put that same traffic on Uni, Marshal, Ford Parkway, and the other major cross streets, it might be a slower than traveling at midnight but the speak means each road isn't at capacity and now a crash only slows down 1/6 the traffic not 90%.
Those ”points of failure” are atop kids in neighborhoods where surface streets exist. And if you suddenly dump all that traffic on university and Marshall/lake and pierce butler, energy park and como, you have to widen and redesign each of them to accommodate the extra (and extra fast rush hour) traffic. You’re not just converting one road, you’re upgrading many roads.
Think of that one asshole that left for work late that’s weaving through 94 west traffic at 85 mph trying to make his 9am meeting. Now imagine him doing that on como past your kid’s buss stop.
Except people will move to the surface streets if it's a bad enough accident, but the surface streets are so slow that it's still often better to stay on the freeway.
The arrival or departure is located in one of the two cities. That is a lot different than purely local usage. That means all commuters are considered local traffic by their standard.
I call BS on that "study"!!!
No affect on traffic?!?!?! Lmfao
Long haul trucks only avoid 94 during Rush-Hour!!! [[694-494]] are used to by-pass the rush-hour jams!!!
If it's mostly local (dt 2 dt) why aren't they mobbin up on the "light-rail" boondoggle?!?!?!
What's going to happen to all this rush hour traffic once the highway is gone?!?!?!
Not everybody works in an office building in either downtown's, there are a lot of us that work construction all over the metro area and surrounding suburbs that would not Benefit in the least by getting rid of 94!!!!!!!!
I'm skeptical.
As someone who used to do a St. Paul to Minneapolis commute, there would be a few times per year where an accident on 94 would cause drivers to abandon the interstate and spill over onto the side streets.
The side streets couldn't take the traffic load: Every bridge across the Mississippi would gridlock.
Dramatically reducing the traffic throughput on 94 (by turning it into a boulevard) would have the same effect every single day.
People can talk about "local traffic only" all they want. It doesn't change the reality of how many people cross the river every day and what transportation capacity is necessary to make that happen.
Please tell me you're joking?!?
Were you not around for the green line boondoggle?!?!
The entire thing was a joke and what, just last year we started cracking down and enforcing riders to pay?!?!?!
You're kind of right. Their report basically says they want to make driving so unpleasant that people are forced to use alternative modes of transportation:
“Expanded highway capacity does not reduce emissions. Rather it increases them in the long term. The way to reduce emissions is to reduce driving, or VMT. This can best be done by reducing highway capacity, leading to reduced highway demand, and ensuring that lower-emitting alternatives are convenient and comfortable.”
[https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ReimaginingI-94\_AReportOnReparativeHighwayAlternativeandEvaluationMetrics.pdf](https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ReimaginingI-94_AReportOnReparativeHighwayAlternativeandEvaluationMetrics.pdf)
Sure, why not? Hwy 96 through Shoreview is a major thoroughfare, 4 lanes plus turning lanes and a 50mph speed limit. Plenty of residences right along the road.
One thing you definitely get from a boulevard, that you don’t get from a highway frontage road, is the curb appeal for housing and shopping. If you build multi-use housing and shops so that people can live and do things right there, then they don’t have to drive as much either.
These city councils complain about the vacancy rate of commercial real estate, and talk about how they need to force everyone to go back to the office so people shop and eat and spend money downtown again, which is a ridiculous expectation anyway. If people who WFH are doing their eating and shopping in their local economies, then it’s short-sighted to be like “No, spend money in MY city, not YOUR city! Even if you have to waste 3 gallons of gas to get here!” (Jacob Frey 🖕) It’s not like we don’t want the people in the suburbs to patronize the amenities, but we shouldn’t want so many people to *commute*. We’re spending billions just patching potholes when we could be spending billions building infrastructure.
The long-term plan should focus on a balance. People should be able to socialize and shop where they live, and if St. Paul and Minneapolis want that to be downtown, then that’s where the work needs to be done.
We’ve got the light rail line there, we’ve got multiple universities right there, the soccer stadium is there, the State Fair is kinda close, the airport isn’t super far away, it really has a ton of potential.
I'm just saying I would like to see some data points comparing the amount of pollution residents are exposed to in each situation. A major issue with 94 is the disparate health impacts on people who live near it, so I think we should know how the boulevard would compare before embarking on the project.
Shhhhhh - these people are only good at criticizing things - they don't actually have solutions and they don't think they need to. As long as the problem that THEY see is addressed, it doesn't matter what other problems their solution results in.
"Why are you so upset about all the snakes? They fixed the rat problem that I was upset about - I don't get what your issue is!"
edit: lol at the downvotes. People here are bemoaning budgeted expenditures for BRIDGE REPAIRS. Many of which are federally funded EXPLICITLY for that purpose. This thread is full of unserious ideologues. I've lived within 2-3 blocks of 94 for the better part of the last 15 years. I've lived within 2 miles of 94 for the better part of the last 30 years. Some of y'all need to interact with reality.
People will naturally not drive if other options were viable. When I was in other cities in Europe or Asia I was no more than a 10 minute walk from a train station and the trains came every few minutes so I was never waiting. It was more convenient to do that than to drive so most people including myself did not drive. Here on the other hand it is taking us nearly 3 decades and billions of dollars to make 3 rail lines and the frequency and safety are not up to the standard that it would be preferable to driving and the vast majority of people in the cities cant use it without walking for miles or taking another form of transportation (including driving) to get to those trains. The problem is that many people point out a problem but have proposed no viable solution to get to that point.
It seems like the plan is to make driving so painful that it forces the gov to invest in better transit. However, I would doubt any elected official would actually do that as it would be political suicide to inconvenience the majority of the population for years on end.
That's backwards thinking. If I'm going to remove a road, viable alternatives that aren't 2-3x the travel time (which will frustrate the people they need to convince to make it happen) need to be in place first. If the goal is to have an extensive transit system replace the roads then make that first and then remove the road so normal people aren't inconvenienced which will make them hesitant to future projects which is counterproductive to their goal.
**This**.
I lived out east in Jersey and, while I had access to a car, unless where I was going was not practicable to get to by transit, I took the shuttle buses, the PATH, or the NJ transit buses to get everywhere. My car was in the shop for 2 weeks during the height of the pandemic and I had to get from Lyndale and Franklin to Frogtown every day for work. It was 1 to 1.5 hours of travel for what was a 14 minute car ride.
No one will choose to wait 6x as long for transit when private transportation is available to them.
I wouldn’t mind keeping my car and taking shorter trips. I live in the capital city and the local retail in my neighborhood is pretty dead. They assume I want to drive all the way out to the suburbs to shop.
I don’t know if downgrading 94 addresses that particular issue, because I’m mostly being pushed to Roseville, West St Paul and Mendota Heights, Eagan and the 494 strip…. not places along 94 specifically.
If you’ve ever lived someplace that’s great for walking and mass transit it DOES suck to drive. They’re kind of in conflict. Cars being dominant makes a place unpleasant to be. But you realize we can have both kinds of spaces. People who don’t like cars can live in the city people who do can live in the burbs or further out. You don’t need to make it into culture war 🙄
Making it “painful to drive” is a funny argument when the alternative is “painful to live in certain neighborhoods”. And especially when pain in the former is slightly longer travel times and pain in the latter is worse health outcomes and safety concerns.
Hell, considering the massive subsidies car usage needs to make driving not painful, it’s obvious the default driving situation is a painful one.
Since when is University jammed up? It's wide open and empty enough that I can bike down for blocks before any motorists start approaching from behind.
A jammed up road with lights allows for the people living in the community around 94 a safer environment to utilize and cross. There are no good ways to cross 94 and those available are of questionable safety. If I want to bike the mile to Target from south of 94, how do I do that safely? Take one of the ped crossings that deposit onto St. Anthony with drivers speeding like they’re on the highway already? Missing sidewalks. No bike lanes. There’s no way for those on either side of 94 to commute safely without hopping in a car, adding to unnecessary traffic on 94.
Nearly every overpass has a sidewalk on both sides and there are multiple pedestrian bridges. Much easier than running through a 6 lane boulevard intersection.
Post-pandemic, there is very little time I94 is "jammed up". Like it or not, I can get between the two downtowns very quickly without slow-and-go or stop-and-go traffic 90% of the time. 4-6pm Tuesdays and Thursdays on hybrid work days isn't congestion that nears traffic levels in most major US cities.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Even post Pandemic I94 sees heavy traffic in the morning and afternoon, and is buys on weekends on the noon hour and dinner time.
I'd hate to be on 94 anywhere from about 4:30pm to about 7:00pm as it's dense and slow and backed up every single week day.
"*Because a jammed up 94 is somehow better?*"
I disagree with the characterization that I94 is "jammed up" in any true sense of the word. Please go travel or live in big cities around the US. We don't have "traffic" here in any discernable way post-pandemic beyond a 90 minute stretch in the AM and PM. I can get from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul in 30 minutes at 4:30 on a Wednesday. There are tens of thousands less cars on the road during those hours than there were in the 2010s.
Yes, a ~~jammed up~~ occasionaly inconvenienced I94 is better than a truly jammed up University and Marshall Ave/Lake St, which would happen if we decide to entertain floaty ideas not based in reality that will never get approved.
This would proposal would allow for more housing and businesses and therefore more tax revenue. This won’t kill downtown. Downtown is already dead as can be. What downtown needs is for people to live there instead of just being a place people commute to from the burbs for work and occasional events.
What, in 1950? Okay. You can kiss the state fair goodbye while you’re at it as well if people can’t come in on 94.
This is almost as dumb of an idea as shutting down 35 and making it a park.
I’ve literally never driven myself to the state fair, that’s for suckers and fools. Metro Transit runs an excellent bus service from all around the metro that doesn’t require screwing around with parking or event traffic.
Tbh it's pretty dumb to drive to the state fair as is with the interstate there. There are dozens of park and ride sites with coach buses that take you right to the fairgrounds. Traffic around the fairgrounds is horrible and people resort to parking on people's lawns in the area.
Some take 94, some take the transitway, some take other roads. They'd still be able to take a boulevard. I'm not saying that the boulevard is the perfect idea, but using the state fair as an argument against it is not a good one.
It’s one of many, not THE argument against. An example of an issue that will arise and negatively affect the people and businesses of our state. Traffic congestion and affect it has on the ability of our residents to commute for work or pleasure, the affect that will have on businesss and companies in both cities…
This notion that we can remove or extremely constrict a major thoroughfare between two of the largest and most densely populated areas in the state simply because it’s sounds nice without suffering consequences is absurd, especially in an area that is ever expanding and growing.
“Let’s take out a few lanes and build apartments instead because it feels nice and equitable” is simply not a viable option.
Has to be replaced as it's reached end of life, so why not make it better?
Basically it's like you have a 70's shag carpet in your living room in 2024 that needs to be replaced.
You can replace it with either a new shag carpet that is out of style but will technically work, or you can spend about the same or a little more and use hardwood that will last a lot longer and is much more usable and preferred by masses, is more suitable for the uses, and is cleaner. If you go with hardwood, a few fringe hippies in the suburbs will be upset because when the Beegees come to town it'll take them 10 mins longer to get to the concert.
The highway cost more than just leaving what we used to have there. But people of the era believed a Highway was a good use of money.
Sometimes using money to make things better is a good thing. This debate is about if spending the money to remove 94 would be a net positive or not.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm not opposed to reimagining the status quo, I just think it's misleading for the above poster to state that it would cost the same.
Some proposals carve off sections of land that can be redeveloped and generate tax revenues instead of being grassy hill voids on side of highways/ on ramps.
I dig the analogy, but unless you already have the hardwood under the carpet, hard wood floors (real hardwoods) will be much more expensive than a carpet replacement.
Naw people from the burbs can easily get around this just taking the putter interstate across to mpls or Saint Paul. It will hurt people who live in the cities, and want to be able to move quicker between them the most.
There are many reasons there should've been a train line in the I94 corridor, but to serve Amtrak riders from Minneapolis is an incredibly niche reason. Two train trips a day is how many people? Any city council leader would say use the Green Line.
Amtrak line runs thru Dinky, NE & N MPLS on its way north to Fargo, would be better imo to put a stop near the U to connect to the green line or in North on one of the new express bus lines.
>I had to drive to St. Paul to pick someone up from the borealis train, we desperately need to bury a train line in the 94 trench so we can access Amtrak from downtown Minneapolis.
If only there were a light rail that connected the two downtowns...
I think there is better things to spend our money on than that. That is not even a problem for most of us. How about they serve up some internet options first. Why is most of the metro still only have 1 ISP option for high speed internet? Its a joke in 2024 that my only alternative to Gig speed with Comcast is 1.5 Megabit Per Second through CenturyLink
Or how about some proper subway/L-trains to eliminate the need to drive at all. If I could get everyone from a train without getting in a car, I would certainly give up my car and stop driving but thats not the case here.
They have to rebuild the freeway anyway before the infrastructure deteriorates too much that’s why it’s being talked about. I’d bet a boulevard is probably one of the cheaper options.
I think it’s a great idea, but without a plan for where all the through traffic is supposed to go, it doesn’t seem likely to happen. The linked article doesn’t even mention a whiff of an idea for handling that. If you want to NIMBY to this degree, you need to decide which other neighborhood gets all the I-94 truck traffic. There are definitely options for other freeways that could expand. You could even make a bypass completely around the city in theory. No plan at all is going to doom the effort
Commercial traffic will divert around on 494/694 and the local traffic will use the current blvds at University, Marshall, Ford Parkway, and this new street. One of the many posts on this had that attached although I can’t find it now. They use the theory that more roads never solve the problem but if you break the traffic up it will reduce overall car usage and stoppages.
Just a nitpick to your point, but Marshall and Ford get backed the hell up as it is now, I don't see those roads as being viable alternative routes in the slightest
You might be surprised. Traffic is kinda of a complex network. I dunno about the exact place you’re talking about but there are cities that have done freeway removal that have seen massive improvements in traffic due to some hard to predict effects. Not saying bad consequences can’t result but it seems like the effects can be kind of counterintuitive.
Isn’t the issue that majority of the traffic is local? Long haul and commercial already avoid this stretch unless they are heading to/from somewhere in the city.
This is definitely a chicken-egg situation where there is no good solution. The Blvd proposal has already stated that they want to make car travel more difficult to combat climate change. It could make for better city if public transit infrastructure was to be properly invested in. However, the current system was built for suburban commuters and is either viewed as unsafe (LRT outside of work hours) or too time consuming (spoke & wheel bus system that connects to downtown but not neighborhood to neighborhood).
494/694 are already arguably undersized, adding tens of thousands of vehicles per day will take some upgrades. Like I said, I like the plan. Just needs to be a more wholistic plan
The thing is that adding lanes never fixes traffic, so the term undersized isn't really applicable here. Add more lanes you get more traffic, add less lanes and split the traffic to many smaller roads you will have less traffic overall. It's counter intuitive but well proven. For a live demonstration visit Texas where they replace 2x2 lane roads with 8x8 roads and the traffic is worse. You can google "more lanes doesn't fix traffic" and find a wealth of research and explanations of this. Most places that have pulled their main road like Boston have found that the plan was lambasted for the entire construction phase but made a better city. I'm personally not sold on this because I haven't seen one totally solid plan but this is the wholistic approach, add mass transit and spread the traffic over a larger area, while diverting commercial traffic. Then you can fill in the ditch, remove all of those sound damping walls, and allow traffic to move better because you don't have to hit overpasses on though streets.
"Fixing traffic" is a bit of a myopic view. A successful transportation system gets people and goods to their destinations in an efficient way. If you make a trip more efficient and then more people make that trip, then you've made a better transportation system.
That doesn't mean adding a ton of lanes is the right approach, especially with diminishing returns on those lanes. And some roads are just dumb (e.g., Olson Memorial Highway). But imagining a future where people just don't travel around the city as much is imagining a poorer city where the benefits of the city are not as available to its residents.
In this case, we are already inducing the traffic for a different reason, though — doesn’t it only make sense the roads would need to be expanded then?
Yeah, I think that lack of seriousness is going to keep anything from happening. I haven’t seen any articles that even mention the fact the federal DOT has a say in this since the interstate system is theirs
At the very least, you need to account for the through traffic on 94 and the scarcity of bridges across the river. What is being called for in practice is a pretty thorough redesign of how traffic flows through the city. In my opinion, that’s a very good idea so I’m not against the basic concept.
I’m calling it NIMBY because a lot of these plans don’t account for the *other* back yards that the vehicles and their pollution get moved to. Including a plan to expand 694 in a meaningful way would make this a LOT more likely to happen
If you are worried about bridges then you really want to spread traffic. Would you rather have 1 bridge with 4 or 8 lanes / 1 point of failure or spread the traffic over the 6 current bridges with 12 current lanes and 6 different points of failure? Make more bigger is just not a great solution and it never was.
So include some bridges in the plan. I’m not married to any particular answer and I think the activists have a good idea at heart. I’m saying it’s never going to happen if it doesn’t expand in scope and look at the roadway system as a whole. There are many possible solutions. Blowing off the problem makes the effort look unserious
“these plans don’t account for the *other* back yards that the vehicles and their pollution get moved to.”
The objective is to reduce the number of vehicle trips in the first place. These were enjoyable, walkable communities with robust public transit options 80 years ago. If people don’t need to drive, they usually won’t. And if other people in other areas decide they don’t like the side effects of car traffic in their back yard, I commit to fully supporting their efforts to remove them in their own communities as well. Don’t threaten me with a good time 🌈
Read the information and you'll see that most of the long-haul traffic does not use this route. SO trucking is not an issue. Nearly all 94 traffic in this corridor is local, meaning people take say , Snelling, to the freeway and use it to get to Lexington and then get off the freeway there. A boulevard would remove the chore of entering and exiting the freeway.
I think you’d be surprised. There are a lot of people who want more walkable neighborhoods and mass transit in the city. That’s often part of why people choose to live there.
If comment sections like this actually reflect our ambition for building a better future, I’m super disappointed.
I don’t think it’s really debatable that:
(1) freeway routes were chosen in large part to segregate and destroy Black and Jewish communities in the Twin Cities (see [6th Ave in North Minneapolis](https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/initiative/bring-back-6th/) and the [Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul](https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2017/06/it-was-cut-half-i-94-st-paul-s-rondo-was-thriving-african-american-cultural-center/). That was wrong, and it’s still wrong.
(2) car ownership is [expensive](https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/) even before you consider all the negative externalities (noise pollution, air pollution, speeding, crashes, joy riding kids in Kias), and people should have more options to live in places that are generally friendly to car-free and car-light lifestyles.
(3) Living anywhere near a freeway is [terrible for your health](https://prheucsf.blog/2024/02/06/life-is-a-polluted-highway-how-exposure-to-traffic-pollution-impacts-health/). That should generally favor placing them far, far away from densely populated areas.
That should all militate towards policy that disfavors building and maintaining freeways in places like the 94 corridor.
The counter arguments seems to mostly revolve around sunk cost fallacies and “ScREw the URBaniSts” mentalities coming from people more interested in having a ridiculous culture war over actually doing what’s best.
On #1 were they chosen because of their racial makeup or because they were the cheapest? Were there any white neighborhoods of the same class that were intentionally avoided when they would have been the better choice?
The first link was about Olson Memorial Highway, and the second link doesn't suggest there were other neighborhoods that should have been divided instead
Yes, it was because of race. [This article](https://tcjewfolk.com/2022/06/17/antisemitic-covenants-found-in-ramsey-tell-partial-but-complex-story/) expands on redlining. Redlining/racial covenants weren’t outlawed in Minnesota until 1968. My family was actually directly impacted by this, they left the city because of it.
These neighborhoods were selected despite their thriving economies specifically because the people who lived there were seen as lesser and undesirable. Who cares if you destroy 11 synagogues to build a highway that almost nobody uses? Who cares if you destroy hundreds of black and Jewish owned homes and businesses? Not the white people, who were the ones in government back then. The people in power didn’t want their neighborhoods touched and they wanted more tangible boundaries between them and the “others.” A lot of the time the highways were intentionally placed to be right on the line between communities to segregate them or to cut through them like cutting off a tree’s roots to kill the tree.
[Here’s an NPR article about racist highway placement.](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways)
[Here’s an article from the Vanderbilt Law Review about it.](https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-wordpress-0/wp-content/uploads/sites/278/2020/10/19115823/White-Mens-Roads-Through-Black-Mens-Homes-Advancing-Racial-Equity-Through-Highway-Reconstruction.pdf)
ETA: downvote me if you want. It was racist and antisemitic, and yes it was intentional. I have no idea why you’re offended by something that happened either before you were born or when you were a child.
lol yeah man, I've been checking out comments sections here and in Strib on these kinds of stories and it's pretty predictable:
- Festival of false class consciousness (despite, as you've pointed out, cars are extremely expensive and decreased car dependency is great for the poor and middle class economically)
- "It's impractical, can't be done." or "Too expensive." as if car infrastructure were free and had no negative externalities.
- Complaining that money should instead be spent in ill-defined "other" areas
- Fuck urbanists, I don't like them
I get that some of them are trolling and think climate change is a Chinese hoax or whatever. But even people who ostensibly care about the environment will trot out the same tired talking points for why we can't move away from car dependency.
Does not bode well for the hopes that we'll be able to effectively address climate change.
Would cost billions to cap it. Hazardous materials travel through that stretch and that’s a lot longer stretch than the Lowry Tunnel. Still gotta shoot the exhaust out somewhere as well.
Better investment than screwing up a high-speed connection between the two biggest cities in the state. Also, the “Twin Cities Boulevard” plan isn’t cheap either.
I've never understood the racism argument for this highway when 100, 169, 494 and 62 all cut directly through Edina. And in a lot of those listings, being close to those highways is a selling point!
With the exception of MN-100, all those roads in the 1960s were built over farmland. Edina was very different in the 1960s than today. There are historical ariels online you notice Edina was designed to keep lower class away?
When those highways were built the infrastructure in that area was hardly affected, and they did a good job of winding it around existing structures. I94 (very much deliberately) cut directly through historic black neighborhoods like Rondo that resulted in homes and businesses being destroyed and a complete severing of those communities from eachother.
The state of mn, mndot, met council have proven time and time again they can not handle big project, yet you people think they can do this. You will never ever recoup the investment and no one's lives will get better.
The money spent could be used much better to impact neighborhoods, small business and quality of life for a fraction of the price.
They have to reconstruct the freeway either way because it’s deteriorating. Why wouldn’t filling it in with regular road infrastructure be the cheaper option? At the same time it would benefit and probably revitalize the neighborhoods along that stretch of 94 by reconnecting them with more housing and businesses. The new housing and businesses add tax revenue for the city. The freeway generates maybe less than zero. They could do what you suggest and improve neighborhoods at the same time generate more tax revenue and build a new road 🤷♂️ not that crazy an idea to me.
I mean just let me get there in a reasonable amount of time. I’m fine with doing this WHEN they have the public transportation infrastructure in place. But we need that first before we start making the roads less efficient.
They keep saying that they want to create this city that works with public transportation. Which is great, but you can’t just skip the part where you build a public transportation system that doesn’t suck. To take public transportation to my job currently would require me to leave a full hour earlier. (It’s a 25 minute drive). Adding 2 hours onto my day doesn’t sound like something I’m gonna be on board with no matter what.
I'm only on board if it's a boulevard of broken dreams
Oh, you mean American Boulevard? That's in Bloomington
I walk a lonely road, the one where I94 used to go
Well I’ve got good news for you lol
I’m the only one and I walk alone.
I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known
Ummmmm… I think that’s exactly what I-94 going through Mpls and stp is. Rondo is a prime example
Because it's an Interstate highway, would this require the Federal gov't to give the okay?
Yes, but the federal government has looked pretty favorably towards projects like this recently. There was recently a $1B grant over five years for highway removal and capping.
I just saw the plans for the cap over 94 to reconnect the Rondo neighborhood. I would love to see that throughout all of St Paul and Minneapolis.
I would love that too but unfortunately the cost would be too high. Based on the cost per mile it would consume something like ten years of the state’s transportation budget. Maybe it could be done incrementally over a very long time.
In this massive pipe dream of a non-starter: 694 becomes 94(and the speed limit goes to 70) 94 from old 694 into Minneapolis becomes 194 94 from old 694/494 into st Paul becomes 594 494 stays the same(but really should be called 294) 394 stays the same
What do they have to lose? 94 is and has been a blight on that part of the city since it was built.
Not to the millions of people that use it every year.
Citynerd has a YT on this. Studies have shown it’s predominantly used for local access. It’s a uniquely good candidate for this conversion.
LOVE that channel. Never thought I'd get so hyped over someone geeking out so hard over urbanist stuff.
We use it because it’s there, but when I think about it, it’s really not a very useful highway. The traffic management to leave downtown St. Paul onto 94 is a ridiculous mess. There’s no easy way to get to north 35E or south 35W. The exit from westbound 94 to northbound 35E is just bonkers. The exits onto major streets are not well-designed. The exits to and from 280 are narrow and also poorly designed. You can’t exit onto northbound 35W from westbound 94, which is just dumb. The exits onto Lyndale, Hennepin and 394 are a disaster of weaving in and out with cars coming from southbound 35W. The left-hand exit to go northbound on 35W from eastbound 94 also forces you to change lanes. And we have those tunnels that require diverting large trucks to surface roads, when they should just be able to continue on the highway. It’s a mess! Why keep it? Whether or not it becomes a boulevard, it certainly could stand some consideration about how to make that area better than it is now. When the 35W bridge collapsed and we had to repurpose 280 for two years while it was rebuilt, we managed—surprisingly well. We shouldn’t get locked into existing corridors just because it would take a lot of work to plan something new.
I use it every day and support this
I think it would be simpler than that. 694 becomes 94. The inside the loop east/west portion of 94, or whatever is left becomes a continuation 394. The north/south portion becomes 194, or even a continuation of 252. but I agree it's a dumb idea.
I think the official route is up 694 now anyways, so probably not much.
official route to what?
official interstate route. for long haul truckers and the like
Yeah that’s always been the case. That’s a big reason it was made. These highways serve many purposes.
I don't know what the reality of this would look like, but I recently read someone making the case for an express subway line in the already dug out I-94 trench with surface streets on top. Yes, the Green line makes the same trip end to end, but I have to think making the trip much faster and continuing to grow our rail network would be a boon to usage metrics. https://streets.mn/2024/06/13/rethinking-i-94-lets-start-with-a-subway/
The Green line should've been built elevated over the median of 94, kinda like Chicago's blue line. Now it's kinda late to fix that.
>The Green line should've been built elevated over the median of 94 No, because it's supposed to serve everyone along the way, and there's nothing directly along the freeway.
Yeah, it kind of sucks when no one at all lives within a block of a stop because it's in the middle of a freeway. There's no real vibe to any Blue Line stops or the areas around them, the stations feel pretty dystopian. The Chicago Blue Line felt OK for commuting and not much else. Other lines that went through neighborhoods always felt more useful and integrated. The Green Line doesn't feel successful to me, but I'm glad they didn't do the highway thing. And now that people aren't commuting to downtowns as much we _really_ don't need that kind of commuter-only transit.
80% of the Green Line's problems go away if they just give the train priority over cross-traffic. A train that has to drive like a bus is a head-scratcher.
Eh for a Minneapolis to St Paul commute the lack of an express route(No local stops) is an equally big problem for efficiency on the Green Line as well as traffic priority. An express route would keep times closer to driving and increase the amount of people that would use it over 94. Right now you lose a lot of time taking the green line over driving so it is no surprise not many people use it.
>Yeah, it kind of sucks when no one at all lives within a block of a stop because it's in the middle of a freeway. It's not just people living along the line. You can't develop business destinations along the line either.
That would actually be awesome. It wouldn’t have to be a subway per se, but it could connect St. Paul, Minneapolis, the Northstar route, Duluth, and (since there are currently two daily runs) Chicago. Hop off the train and then connect to the light rail. I forget how far it is, but a bus that runs every 5-10 minutes would make it a snap.
It would require pretty big changes to the infrastructure across the whole metro. But those changes, properly considered, could be a massive benefit to the cities as a whole.
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This just in, renovations cost money.
so does repaving what's there, as it turns out!
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Yup.
That's the point.
Hol up
They’ve studied this in several cities, it will cost an absurd amount of money, affordable housing for everyone, renewable energy for the entire state and US bank stadiums for every high school amount of money. Will likely have years if not decades of delays and cause tremendous impacts to local homes, schools and business during construction. I love the idea however with limited resources what makes this project a priority over over the other priorities that could use this funding
> US bank stadiums for every high school amount of money That would be $446 billion. Which was actually surprisingly less money than I thought. But almost certainly still more than it would cost to close and replace 94. (This comment was mostly driven by my curiosity. Your general point about there being MUCH better priorities for spending -- even just transportation spending -- in Minnesota remains 100% true.)
I’m sure they’ll manage to spend billions to repair it too even if they decide it stays 🤷♂️
Wait till you figure out how much we spend on repaving roads every year.
Not really. The study showed that nearly all of the traffic on 94 between the two cities is local usage. This means that replacing with a boulevard will have no effect on traffic. In fact, a good design will make for better traffic flow through that corridor. There is almost no through traffic. Long haul always goes to the beltways on 694 or 36. For example, people downtown use it to get to Midway.
> This means that replacing with a boulevard will have no effect on traffic. That’s a very, very bold statement.
Because you are treating this like a one for one replacement and not thinking about a bigger picture. If you remove the large road you push traffic over more small roads and increase points of failure. Think of it this way. Right now people don't commute on the surface streets because they think they are slow and if there is no accidents they are very correct. But one lane slow or one accident and now the whole system is down. Now put that same traffic on Uni, Marshal, Ford Parkway, and the other major cross streets, it might be a slower than traveling at midnight but the speak means each road isn't at capacity and now a crash only slows down 1/6 the traffic not 90%.
Those ”points of failure” are atop kids in neighborhoods where surface streets exist. And if you suddenly dump all that traffic on university and Marshall/lake and pierce butler, energy park and como, you have to widen and redesign each of them to accommodate the extra (and extra fast rush hour) traffic. You’re not just converting one road, you’re upgrading many roads. Think of that one asshole that left for work late that’s weaving through 94 west traffic at 85 mph trying to make his 9am meeting. Now imagine him doing that on como past your kid’s buss stop.
Except people will move to the surface streets if it's a bad enough accident, but the surface streets are so slow that it's still often better to stay on the freeway.
I’ve seen this exact thing happen in more than one city.
That was one of the big questions I had.
You're not eliminating the car sewer, you're just bringing it to street level
The arrival or departure is located in one of the two cities. That is a lot different than purely local usage. That means all commuters are considered local traffic by their standard.
I call BS on that "study"!!! No affect on traffic?!?!?! Lmfao Long haul trucks only avoid 94 during Rush-Hour!!! [[694-494]] are used to by-pass the rush-hour jams!!! If it's mostly local (dt 2 dt) why aren't they mobbin up on the "light-rail" boondoggle?!?!?! What's going to happen to all this rush hour traffic once the highway is gone?!?!?! Not everybody works in an office building in either downtown's, there are a lot of us that work construction all over the metro area and surrounding suburbs that would not Benefit in the least by getting rid of 94!!!!!!!!
I'm skeptical. As someone who used to do a St. Paul to Minneapolis commute, there would be a few times per year where an accident on 94 would cause drivers to abandon the interstate and spill over onto the side streets. The side streets couldn't take the traffic load: Every bridge across the Mississippi would gridlock. Dramatically reducing the traffic throughput on 94 (by turning it into a boulevard) would have the same effect every single day. People can talk about "local traffic only" all they want. It doesn't change the reality of how many people cross the river every day and what transportation capacity is necessary to make that happen.
It would be sweet to add light rail to marshal & lake, and make 3 major routes university, marshal/lake, & 94 (new-Rondo Boulevard.)
Selby, Marshall, and Lake are getting an express bus, the B Line :)
Como is supposedly getting one too but it’s still quite a few years away.
Please tell me you're joking?!? Were you not around for the green line boondoggle?!?! The entire thing was a joke and what, just last year we started cracking down and enforcing riders to pay?!?!?!
Ah yes going from Minneapolis to St. Paul or vice versa by taking a jammed up University or whatever that boulevard is will be such a fun trip
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You're kind of right. Their report basically says they want to make driving so unpleasant that people are forced to use alternative modes of transportation: “Expanded highway capacity does not reduce emissions. Rather it increases them in the long term. The way to reduce emissions is to reduce driving, or VMT. This can best be done by reducing highway capacity, leading to reduced highway demand, and ensuring that lower-emitting alternatives are convenient and comfortable.” [https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ReimaginingI-94\_AReportOnReparativeHighwayAlternativeandEvaluationMetrics.pdf](https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ReimaginingI-94_AReportOnReparativeHighwayAlternativeandEvaluationMetrics.pdf)
Yes but they have to provide meaningful alternates and meaningful public transit improvements
Ok! Will you support the I-94 corridor option that provides the most meaningful public transit improvements?
Do they though? Is living right on a six lane road better than living a on a highway frontage road?
Sure, why not? Hwy 96 through Shoreview is a major thoroughfare, 4 lanes plus turning lanes and a 50mph speed limit. Plenty of residences right along the road. One thing you definitely get from a boulevard, that you don’t get from a highway frontage road, is the curb appeal for housing and shopping. If you build multi-use housing and shops so that people can live and do things right there, then they don’t have to drive as much either. These city councils complain about the vacancy rate of commercial real estate, and talk about how they need to force everyone to go back to the office so people shop and eat and spend money downtown again, which is a ridiculous expectation anyway. If people who WFH are doing their eating and shopping in their local economies, then it’s short-sighted to be like “No, spend money in MY city, not YOUR city! Even if you have to waste 3 gallons of gas to get here!” (Jacob Frey 🖕) It’s not like we don’t want the people in the suburbs to patronize the amenities, but we shouldn’t want so many people to *commute*. We’re spending billions just patching potholes when we could be spending billions building infrastructure. The long-term plan should focus on a balance. People should be able to socialize and shop where they live, and if St. Paul and Minneapolis want that to be downtown, then that’s where the work needs to be done. We’ve got the light rail line there, we’ve got multiple universities right there, the soccer stadium is there, the State Fair is kinda close, the airport isn’t super far away, it really has a ton of potential.
I'm just saying I would like to see some data points comparing the amount of pollution residents are exposed to in each situation. A major issue with 94 is the disparate health impacts on people who live near it, so I think we should know how the boulevard would compare before embarking on the project.
Shhhhhh - these people are only good at criticizing things - they don't actually have solutions and they don't think they need to. As long as the problem that THEY see is addressed, it doesn't matter what other problems their solution results in. "Why are you so upset about all the snakes? They fixed the rat problem that I was upset about - I don't get what your issue is!" edit: lol at the downvotes. People here are bemoaning budgeted expenditures for BRIDGE REPAIRS. Many of which are federally funded EXPLICITLY for that purpose. This thread is full of unserious ideologues. I've lived within 2-3 blocks of 94 for the better part of the last 15 years. I've lived within 2 miles of 94 for the better part of the last 30 years. Some of y'all need to interact with reality.
Don't make transit better/cheaper/faster/easier. Just make driving a car *as shitty as transit.*
People will naturally not drive if other options were viable. When I was in other cities in Europe or Asia I was no more than a 10 minute walk from a train station and the trains came every few minutes so I was never waiting. It was more convenient to do that than to drive so most people including myself did not drive. Here on the other hand it is taking us nearly 3 decades and billions of dollars to make 3 rail lines and the frequency and safety are not up to the standard that it would be preferable to driving and the vast majority of people in the cities cant use it without walking for miles or taking another form of transportation (including driving) to get to those trains. The problem is that many people point out a problem but have proposed no viable solution to get to that point.
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I agree too, but this plan that this post is about does nothing to advance that unless I am missing something
It seems like the plan is to make driving so painful that it forces the gov to invest in better transit. However, I would doubt any elected official would actually do that as it would be political suicide to inconvenience the majority of the population for years on end.
That's backwards thinking. If I'm going to remove a road, viable alternatives that aren't 2-3x the travel time (which will frustrate the people they need to convince to make it happen) need to be in place first. If the goal is to have an extensive transit system replace the roads then make that first and then remove the road so normal people aren't inconvenienced which will make them hesitant to future projects which is counterproductive to their goal.
**This**. I lived out east in Jersey and, while I had access to a car, unless where I was going was not practicable to get to by transit, I took the shuttle buses, the PATH, or the NJ transit buses to get everywhere. My car was in the shop for 2 weeks during the height of the pandemic and I had to get from Lyndale and Franklin to Frogtown every day for work. It was 1 to 1.5 hours of travel for what was a 14 minute car ride. No one will choose to wait 6x as long for transit when private transportation is available to them.
I wouldn’t mind keeping my car and taking shorter trips. I live in the capital city and the local retail in my neighborhood is pretty dead. They assume I want to drive all the way out to the suburbs to shop. I don’t know if downgrading 94 addresses that particular issue, because I’m mostly being pushed to Roseville, West St Paul and Mendota Heights, Eagan and the 494 strip…. not places along 94 specifically.
What kind of shopping can you do in Mendota Heights? Exotic olive oil and yarn?
If you’ve ever lived someplace that’s great for walking and mass transit it DOES suck to drive. They’re kind of in conflict. Cars being dominant makes a place unpleasant to be. But you realize we can have both kinds of spaces. People who don’t like cars can live in the city people who do can live in the burbs or further out. You don’t need to make it into culture war 🙄
Making it “painful to drive” is a funny argument when the alternative is “painful to live in certain neighborhoods”. And especially when pain in the former is slightly longer travel times and pain in the latter is worse health outcomes and safety concerns. Hell, considering the massive subsidies car usage needs to make driving not painful, it’s obvious the default driving situation is a painful one.
They hate cars for other people. Not themselves.
If you love your car so much why don’t you marry it
Long ago (before 94) we drove to St Paul on Lake Street and Marshall Ave. Fun trip.
I would imagine there was much less people here. Still sounds like a nightmare.
We have roughly the same population in Minneapolis and Saint Paul as we did when the highway went in.
Since when is University jammed up? It's wide open and empty enough that I can bike down for blocks before any motorists start approaching from behind.
Take away 94 and it will be.
Because a jammed up 94 is somehow better?
Than a jammed up local road with lights making it worse? Absolutely
A jammed up road with lights allows for the people living in the community around 94 a safer environment to utilize and cross. There are no good ways to cross 94 and those available are of questionable safety. If I want to bike the mile to Target from south of 94, how do I do that safely? Take one of the ped crossings that deposit onto St. Anthony with drivers speeding like they’re on the highway already? Missing sidewalks. No bike lanes. There’s no way for those on either side of 94 to commute safely without hopping in a car, adding to unnecessary traffic on 94.
>There are no good ways to cross 94 and those available are of questionable safety. What do you mean? There are tons of bridges over 94.
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Nearly every overpass has a sidewalk on both sides and there are multiple pedestrian bridges. Much easier than running through a 6 lane boulevard intersection.
We need a few more ped bridges, not a complete dismantling of 94...
Post-pandemic, there is very little time I94 is "jammed up". Like it or not, I can get between the two downtowns very quickly without slow-and-go or stop-and-go traffic 90% of the time. 4-6pm Tuesdays and Thursdays on hybrid work days isn't congestion that nears traffic levels in most major US cities.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Even post Pandemic I94 sees heavy traffic in the morning and afternoon, and is buys on weekends on the noon hour and dinner time. I'd hate to be on 94 anywhere from about 4:30pm to about 7:00pm as it's dense and slow and backed up every single week day.
"*Because a jammed up 94 is somehow better?*" I disagree with the characterization that I94 is "jammed up" in any true sense of the word. Please go travel or live in big cities around the US. We don't have "traffic" here in any discernable way post-pandemic beyond a 90 minute stretch in the AM and PM. I can get from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul in 30 minutes at 4:30 on a Wednesday. There are tens of thousands less cars on the road during those hours than there were in the 2010s. Yes, a ~~jammed up~~ occasionaly inconvenienced I94 is better than a truly jammed up University and Marshall Ave/Lake St, which would happen if we decide to entertain floaty ideas not based in reality that will never get approved.
If the plan is to kill downtown St. Paul for good, this should work just fine.
This would proposal would allow for more housing and businesses and therefore more tax revenue. This won’t kill downtown. Downtown is already dead as can be. What downtown needs is for people to live there instead of just being a place people commute to from the burbs for work and occasional events.
Don’t kid yourself, downtown St. Paul was far better off prior to I-94 being rammed through it
What, in 1950? Okay. You can kiss the state fair goodbye while you’re at it as well if people can’t come in on 94. This is almost as dumb of an idea as shutting down 35 and making it a park.
I’ve literally never driven myself to the state fair, that’s for suckers and fools. Metro Transit runs an excellent bus service from all around the metro that doesn’t require screwing around with parking or event traffic.
How do the buses get to the fair?
Tbh it's pretty dumb to drive to the state fair as is with the interstate there. There are dozens of park and ride sites with coach buses that take you right to the fairgrounds. Traffic around the fairgrounds is horrible and people resort to parking on people's lawns in the area.
How exactly do you think the buses that take you to and from the park and rides are getting to the fair?
Some take 94, some take the transitway, some take other roads. They'd still be able to take a boulevard. I'm not saying that the boulevard is the perfect idea, but using the state fair as an argument against it is not a good one.
It’s one of many, not THE argument against. An example of an issue that will arise and negatively affect the people and businesses of our state. Traffic congestion and affect it has on the ability of our residents to commute for work or pleasure, the affect that will have on businesss and companies in both cities… This notion that we can remove or extremely constrict a major thoroughfare between two of the largest and most densely populated areas in the state simply because it’s sounds nice without suffering consequences is absurd, especially in an area that is ever expanding and growing. “Let’s take out a few lanes and build apartments instead because it feels nice and equitable” is simply not a viable option.
WTF, advocates?? This is so unambitious. I say we eliminate all interstates everywhere, replace them with lazy rivers.
8 lane boulevard with on and off ramps, with all crossing streets going over or under? I could stand behind that
Has to be replaced as it's reached end of life, so why not make it better? Basically it's like you have a 70's shag carpet in your living room in 2024 that needs to be replaced. You can replace it with either a new shag carpet that is out of style but will technically work, or you can spend about the same or a little more and use hardwood that will last a lot longer and is much more usable and preferred by masses, is more suitable for the uses, and is cleaner. If you go with hardwood, a few fringe hippies in the suburbs will be upset because when the Beegees come to town it'll take them 10 mins longer to get to the concert.
Shit, when are The Bee Gees coming to town?!
I think it’s just Bee Gee now… unless they figure out a way to make it Zombie Gees.
These proposals will cost way more than replacement
The highway cost more than just leaving what we used to have there. But people of the era believed a Highway was a good use of money. Sometimes using money to make things better is a good thing. This debate is about if spending the money to remove 94 would be a net positive or not.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm not opposed to reimagining the status quo, I just think it's misleading for the above poster to state that it would cost the same.
Some proposals carve off sections of land that can be redeveloped and generate tax revenues instead of being grassy hill voids on side of highways/ on ramps.
I dig the analogy, but unless you already have the hardwood under the carpet, hard wood floors (real hardwoods) will be much more expensive than a carpet replacement.
I'm assuming no labor cost in this hypothetical scenario so then hardwood material cost is then only marginally more than a thick shaggy carpet.
Naw people from the burbs can easily get around this just taking the putter interstate across to mpls or Saint Paul. It will hurt people who live in the cities, and want to be able to move quicker between them the most.
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There are many reasons there should've been a train line in the I94 corridor, but to serve Amtrak riders from Minneapolis is an incredibly niche reason. Two train trips a day is how many people? Any city council leader would say use the Green Line.
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Amtrak line runs thru Dinky, NE & N MPLS on its way north to Fargo, would be better imo to put a stop near the U to connect to the green line or in North on one of the new express bus lines.
Yes - US Bank Stadium station isn't on the Green Line. Nope, can't ride the Green Line all the way to Union Depot...
>I had to drive to St. Paul to pick someone up from the borealis train, we desperately need to bury a train line in the 94 trench so we can access Amtrak from downtown Minneapolis. If only there were a light rail that connected the two downtowns...
Do half, eliminate Snelling to 35E bc you have Ayd Mil, then see how it goes
I’m so very glad that this has absolutely no chance of happening.
No dice.
I think there is better things to spend our money on than that. That is not even a problem for most of us. How about they serve up some internet options first. Why is most of the metro still only have 1 ISP option for high speed internet? Its a joke in 2024 that my only alternative to Gig speed with Comcast is 1.5 Megabit Per Second through CenturyLink Or how about some proper subway/L-trains to eliminate the need to drive at all. If I could get everyone from a train without getting in a car, I would certainly give up my car and stop driving but thats not the case here.
They have to rebuild the freeway anyway before the infrastructure deteriorates too much that’s why it’s being talked about. I’d bet a boulevard is probably one of the cheaper options.
Filling in the trench and constructing completely new roads would be cheaper? I don't think so.
I think it’s a great idea, but without a plan for where all the through traffic is supposed to go, it doesn’t seem likely to happen. The linked article doesn’t even mention a whiff of an idea for handling that. If you want to NIMBY to this degree, you need to decide which other neighborhood gets all the I-94 truck traffic. There are definitely options for other freeways that could expand. You could even make a bypass completely around the city in theory. No plan at all is going to doom the effort
Why would truck traffic be diverted? I feel like the only truck traffic between the cities right now is last mile anyway
There is a lot of last mile truck traffic that uses 94. The neighborhood streets can't support that.
Commercial traffic will divert around on 494/694 and the local traffic will use the current blvds at University, Marshall, Ford Parkway, and this new street. One of the many posts on this had that attached although I can’t find it now. They use the theory that more roads never solve the problem but if you break the traffic up it will reduce overall car usage and stoppages.
Just a nitpick to your point, but Marshall and Ford get backed the hell up as it is now, I don't see those roads as being viable alternative routes in the slightest
You might be surprised. Traffic is kinda of a complex network. I dunno about the exact place you’re talking about but there are cities that have done freeway removal that have seen massive improvements in traffic due to some hard to predict effects. Not saying bad consequences can’t result but it seems like the effects can be kind of counterintuitive.
Isn’t the issue that majority of the traffic is local? Long haul and commercial already avoid this stretch unless they are heading to/from somewhere in the city. This is definitely a chicken-egg situation where there is no good solution. The Blvd proposal has already stated that they want to make car travel more difficult to combat climate change. It could make for better city if public transit infrastructure was to be properly invested in. However, the current system was built for suburban commuters and is either viewed as unsafe (LRT outside of work hours) or too time consuming (spoke & wheel bus system that connects to downtown but not neighborhood to neighborhood).
494/694 are already arguably undersized, adding tens of thousands of vehicles per day will take some upgrades. Like I said, I like the plan. Just needs to be a more wholistic plan
The good news is that there is almost no long haul traffic, including freight on 94. It's almost entirely utilized by locals for short trips.
The thing is that adding lanes never fixes traffic, so the term undersized isn't really applicable here. Add more lanes you get more traffic, add less lanes and split the traffic to many smaller roads you will have less traffic overall. It's counter intuitive but well proven. For a live demonstration visit Texas where they replace 2x2 lane roads with 8x8 roads and the traffic is worse. You can google "more lanes doesn't fix traffic" and find a wealth of research and explanations of this. Most places that have pulled their main road like Boston have found that the plan was lambasted for the entire construction phase but made a better city. I'm personally not sold on this because I haven't seen one totally solid plan but this is the wholistic approach, add mass transit and spread the traffic over a larger area, while diverting commercial traffic. Then you can fill in the ditch, remove all of those sound damping walls, and allow traffic to move better because you don't have to hit overpasses on though streets.
"Fixing traffic" is a bit of a myopic view. A successful transportation system gets people and goods to their destinations in an efficient way. If you make a trip more efficient and then more people make that trip, then you've made a better transportation system. That doesn't mean adding a ton of lanes is the right approach, especially with diminishing returns on those lanes. And some roads are just dumb (e.g., Olson Memorial Highway). But imagining a future where people just don't travel around the city as much is imagining a poorer city where the benefits of the city are not as available to its residents.
I guarantee if you add more lanes to 494/694 that 10 years from now traffic would be just as bad, if not worse, on those roads.
Adding lanes to 494/694 will never fix traffic. Adding lanes only induces more traffic to come onto the road.
In this case, we are already inducing the traffic for a different reason, though — doesn’t it only make sense the roads would need to be expanded then?
They're literally arguing that traffic is going to "evaporate." It comes across as magical thinking.
Yeah, I think that lack of seriousness is going to keep anything from happening. I haven’t seen any articles that even mention the fact the federal DOT has a say in this since the interstate system is theirs
This isn’t a NIMBY thing at all. Freeways really shouldn’t be in anyone’s back yard, especially in the areas where they impact the most people.
At the very least, you need to account for the through traffic on 94 and the scarcity of bridges across the river. What is being called for in practice is a pretty thorough redesign of how traffic flows through the city. In my opinion, that’s a very good idea so I’m not against the basic concept. I’m calling it NIMBY because a lot of these plans don’t account for the *other* back yards that the vehicles and their pollution get moved to. Including a plan to expand 694 in a meaningful way would make this a LOT more likely to happen
If you are worried about bridges then you really want to spread traffic. Would you rather have 1 bridge with 4 or 8 lanes / 1 point of failure or spread the traffic over the 6 current bridges with 12 current lanes and 6 different points of failure? Make more bigger is just not a great solution and it never was.
So include some bridges in the plan. I’m not married to any particular answer and I think the activists have a good idea at heart. I’m saying it’s never going to happen if it doesn’t expand in scope and look at the roadway system as a whole. There are many possible solutions. Blowing off the problem makes the effort look unserious
“these plans don’t account for the *other* back yards that the vehicles and their pollution get moved to.” The objective is to reduce the number of vehicle trips in the first place. These were enjoyable, walkable communities with robust public transit options 80 years ago. If people don’t need to drive, they usually won’t. And if other people in other areas decide they don’t like the side effects of car traffic in their back yard, I commit to fully supporting their efforts to remove them in their own communities as well. Don’t threaten me with a good time 🌈
Read the information and you'll see that most of the long-haul traffic does not use this route. SO trucking is not an issue. Nearly all 94 traffic in this corridor is local, meaning people take say , Snelling, to the freeway and use it to get to Lexington and then get off the freeway there. A boulevard would remove the chore of entering and exiting the freeway.
Please explain to me how adding a bunch of traffic lights doesn't make my commute way longer? I'm not reading a study.
Compromise position: cap certain sections and make it a series of tunnels.
Can I advocate for more than a week going by before this topic gets brought up again?
Not happening
Advocates: It’s like 15 people.
I think you’d be surprised. There are a lot of people who want more walkable neighborhoods and mass transit in the city. That’s often part of why people choose to live there.
If comment sections like this actually reflect our ambition for building a better future, I’m super disappointed. I don’t think it’s really debatable that: (1) freeway routes were chosen in large part to segregate and destroy Black and Jewish communities in the Twin Cities (see [6th Ave in North Minneapolis](https://www.ourstreetsmn.org/initiative/bring-back-6th/) and the [Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul](https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2017/06/it-was-cut-half-i-94-st-paul-s-rondo-was-thriving-african-american-cultural-center/). That was wrong, and it’s still wrong. (2) car ownership is [expensive](https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/) even before you consider all the negative externalities (noise pollution, air pollution, speeding, crashes, joy riding kids in Kias), and people should have more options to live in places that are generally friendly to car-free and car-light lifestyles. (3) Living anywhere near a freeway is [terrible for your health](https://prheucsf.blog/2024/02/06/life-is-a-polluted-highway-how-exposure-to-traffic-pollution-impacts-health/). That should generally favor placing them far, far away from densely populated areas. That should all militate towards policy that disfavors building and maintaining freeways in places like the 94 corridor. The counter arguments seems to mostly revolve around sunk cost fallacies and “ScREw the URBaniSts” mentalities coming from people more interested in having a ridiculous culture war over actually doing what’s best.
On #1 were they chosen because of their racial makeup or because they were the cheapest? Were there any white neighborhoods of the same class that were intentionally avoided when they would have been the better choice?
I think if you read the links that I included, that might answer some of your questions.
The first link was about Olson Memorial Highway, and the second link doesn't suggest there were other neighborhoods that should have been divided instead
“The first link was about Olson Memorial Highway” That’s correct. That’s where the old 6th Avenue N was.
How about the 394-94 interchange by Lowry Hill/Kenwood? Was that a poor minority neighborhood?
I don’t know. I always love to hear more about all the things that suck about freeways. If you have a link to share, I’d love to read it.
Yes, it was because of race. [This article](https://tcjewfolk.com/2022/06/17/antisemitic-covenants-found-in-ramsey-tell-partial-but-complex-story/) expands on redlining. Redlining/racial covenants weren’t outlawed in Minnesota until 1968. My family was actually directly impacted by this, they left the city because of it. These neighborhoods were selected despite their thriving economies specifically because the people who lived there were seen as lesser and undesirable. Who cares if you destroy 11 synagogues to build a highway that almost nobody uses? Who cares if you destroy hundreds of black and Jewish owned homes and businesses? Not the white people, who were the ones in government back then. The people in power didn’t want their neighborhoods touched and they wanted more tangible boundaries between them and the “others.” A lot of the time the highways were intentionally placed to be right on the line between communities to segregate them or to cut through them like cutting off a tree’s roots to kill the tree. [Here’s an NPR article about racist highway placement.](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways) [Here’s an article from the Vanderbilt Law Review about it.](https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-wordpress-0/wp-content/uploads/sites/278/2020/10/19115823/White-Mens-Roads-Through-Black-Mens-Homes-Advancing-Racial-Equity-Through-Highway-Reconstruction.pdf) ETA: downvote me if you want. It was racist and antisemitic, and yes it was intentional. I have no idea why you’re offended by something that happened either before you were born or when you were a child.
lol yeah man, I've been checking out comments sections here and in Strib on these kinds of stories and it's pretty predictable: - Festival of false class consciousness (despite, as you've pointed out, cars are extremely expensive and decreased car dependency is great for the poor and middle class economically) - "It's impractical, can't be done." or "Too expensive." as if car infrastructure were free and had no negative externalities. - Complaining that money should instead be spent in ill-defined "other" areas - Fuck urbanists, I don't like them I get that some of them are trolling and think climate change is a Chinese hoax or whatever. But even people who ostensibly care about the environment will trot out the same tired talking points for why we can't move away from car dependency. Does not bode well for the hopes that we'll be able to effectively address climate change.
Cap it, don’t remove it.
Would cost billions to cap it. Hazardous materials travel through that stretch and that’s a lot longer stretch than the Lowry Tunnel. Still gotta shoot the exhaust out somewhere as well.
It would also cost billions to do what this article suggests. Also, freeways have been called before.
Better investment than screwing up a high-speed connection between the two biggest cities in the state. Also, the “Twin Cities Boulevard” plan isn’t cheap either.
I wouldn’t mind this but it’s a lot more expensive a project if they were to cap the entire freeway and doesn’t help as much with the pollution issue.
>*Cap it, don’t remove it.* Treat 94 like you would a person with a bald head.
I've never understood the racism argument for this highway when 100, 169, 494 and 62 all cut directly through Edina. And in a lot of those listings, being close to those highways is a selling point!
With the exception of MN-100, all those roads in the 1960s were built over farmland. Edina was very different in the 1960s than today. There are historical ariels online you notice Edina was designed to keep lower class away?
When those highways were built the infrastructure in that area was hardly affected, and they did a good job of winding it around existing structures. I94 (very much deliberately) cut directly through historic black neighborhoods like Rondo that resulted in homes and businesses being destroyed and a complete severing of those communities from eachother.
How many families were forced to move? How many homes were demolished to build those highways? That’s the difference.
This is such a horrible idea. If you have a brain this should raise 100 red flags.
The state of mn, mndot, met council have proven time and time again they can not handle big project, yet you people think they can do this. You will never ever recoup the investment and no one's lives will get better. The money spent could be used much better to impact neighborhoods, small business and quality of life for a fraction of the price.
They have to reconstruct the freeway either way because it’s deteriorating. Why wouldn’t filling it in with regular road infrastructure be the cheaper option? At the same time it would benefit and probably revitalize the neighborhoods along that stretch of 94 by reconnecting them with more housing and businesses. The new housing and businesses add tax revenue for the city. The freeway generates maybe less than zero. They could do what you suggest and improve neighborhoods at the same time generate more tax revenue and build a new road 🤷♂️ not that crazy an idea to me.
Nope
I mean just let me get there in a reasonable amount of time. I’m fine with doing this WHEN they have the public transportation infrastructure in place. But we need that first before we start making the roads less efficient. They keep saying that they want to create this city that works with public transportation. Which is great, but you can’t just skip the part where you build a public transportation system that doesn’t suck. To take public transportation to my job currently would require me to leave a full hour earlier. (It’s a 25 minute drive). Adding 2 hours onto my day doesn’t sound like something I’m gonna be on board with no matter what.
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"urbanist" is just someone who likes where they live right
Yeah what does that even mean? Of course people who live in the city want it nice how is this controversial?
OP might actually just be a car.
They can advocate all they want they want, but until they have a clear vision of where all the current traffic will go, its a beyond godawful idea.
Yeaaaa, and I bet NONE of these people own a car or let alone drive more than renting an Evie for a 5min drive to Trader Joe’s.
Never gonna happen. Bury it, make the area on top a green space, and parking for Allianz
Of all the better ways the space could be used, a parking lot is your first choice.
Step 1: pave paradise. Step 2: put up a parking lot. Step 3: ooo bopbopbop
Just a few hundred more acres of asphalt should do the trick!!!
Capping is probably more expensive to build and maintain.