I35W/Highway 62 Crosstown Commons

I35W/Highway 62 Crosstown Commons

Nathan Aul, Mike Martin, and Bob Krussow

Background

The Highway 62/Crosstown Highway was built in the 1960s by Hennepin County. Crosstown was one of only a few county operated highways in the country. In 1988, its operation was switched to the State of Minnesota. Since then traffic demands have overloaded the highway making the need for an expansion evident.

The construction project calls for I-35W and MN Highway 62 to be separated and expanded. MnDOT’s initial plans for the project were rejected by the Minnesota Legislature because it did not take into account future traffic demands. A revised plan was presented in early 2002 including an additional lane for northbound and southbound traffic on I-35W. An addition lane, each way, for Highway 62 is also proposed for the project. Currently, the project is on hold due to contention by the City of Minneapolis, claiming that there is not enough funding for mass transit.

Some other alternatives have been considered for the reconstruction of the Commons area. But, these alternatives were either found to be insufficient in solving the congestion problem, or they did not provide an adequate transit component.

Purpose

Due to the aging infrastructure and low levels of service (E and F) during the peak hours in the Crosstown Commons area, changes must be made to increase capacity and safety. MnDOT’s plan for the Crosstown Commons area includes dividing I-35W and Highway 62 through the commons area with I-35W in the middle of Highway 62. Transition zones will occur both inside and outside the commons area. HOV lanes are included on the inner lane of I-35W throughout the Crosstown Commons. Adding additional lanes to both highway 62 and to I-35W is expected to increase capacity through the area to allow for 20 years of expected growth.

Municipal Consent Denial

The reason that the project is currently being held up is that the City of Minneapolis did not give MnDOT municipal consent, which is required to construct projects in the city. The consent report gave many motives for this denial, and it also provided requests for improvements. Some of the reasons for the denial were:

The design did not address the continuation of the bus line into downtown.
The project causes problems on parallels and no solution was provided for this problem during the construction.
Insufficient pedestrian improvements in the Commons area.
Unnecessary removal of homes and businesses.
Inadequate analysis of environmental and health impacts.
Etc.

The city wants these problems to be improved or solved before the project begins.

And, the city views the need for a bus rapid transit (BRT) from Burnsville to downtown Minneapolis as the most important issue for this project.

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