Minnesota Notes

[bschultzy]

The new ramp from I-94W to 7th St., replacing the ramp to 5th St. near US Bank Stadium, is now open to traffic. It's definitely weird not having the 5th St. ramp after using it for three years during my morning commute, but it makes sense. It also reminds me of a plan I saw that had that ramp from the beginning.

[froggie]

Saw the signs for that yesterday and it threw me off at first.

Speaking of which, I just returned back East from a 5 day trip to Minnesota.  A few notes:

- Traversing through a good chunk of Districts 1 and 3, we found 60 MPH speed zones are now posted on lengthy segments of the following routes:  MN 18, MN 23, MN 47, MN 107, and MN 210.

- Noticed that Metro Division is now using 3-digit-sized reassurance shields along US 169, at least within Hennepin County.  The standard has long been to use 2-digit-size shields for 3-digit routes and use Series C font where necessary to fit the digits.  These shields were much wider...able to easily fit Series D digits.

- Though I missed a photo opportunity, there is at least one exit on the US 169 Shakopee Bypass that has an exit number posted on the guide signage.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

- Though I missed a photo opportunity, there is at least one exit on the US 169 Shakopee Bypass that has an exit number posted on the guide signage.

I managed to get a photo a couple weeks ago for those who want to see it. Apologies for the ugly Scott County 83 shields.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

A slew of exit numbers have popped up on the US 10/61 freeway between Bailey and Summit in the southeast metro. The downside is all the new I-494 shields on the signs are ugly. 

[MNHighwayMan]

The downside is all the new I-494 shields on the signs are ugly. 

In what way?

[TheHighwayMan3561]

The downside is all the new I-494 shields on the signs are ugly. 

In what way?

The word "INTERSTATE" is an ugly font and spreads the entire width of the shield.

[froggie]

TIGER grants were announced in another thread, but of note in the awards is $17M for a new interchange at US 169/MN 41/CSAH 78.

[Bickendan]

What's with the milemarkers on US 65? They're in the low 300s, which doesn't make any sense at all, and only reach the 270-280s on the Iowa side.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

What's with the milemarkers on US 65? They're in the low 300s, which doesn't make any sense at all, and only reach the 270-280s on the Iowa side.

Most likely changed in order to prevent internal confusion with MN 65 - the Twin Cities' MN 62 has mileposts starting in the 100s for that reason.

[texaskdog]

have you ever given a direction that referred to "MN 62 mile marker 24"?

[TheHighwayMan3561]

have you ever given a direction that referred to "MN 62 mile marker 24"?

I don't think it has anything to do with Joe Motorist. It's related to the internal DOT inventory and internal records.

[texaskdog]

have you ever given a direction that referred to "MN 62 mile marker 24"?

I don't think it has anything to do with Joe Motorist. It's related to the internal DOT inventory and internal records.

I don't know we cared so much

ha ha

Actually I was surprised they just didn't renumber the other MN 62

[froggie]

Both 62's had long-standing route numbers.  MnDOT perceived there was a low chance of confusion between the two, and so kept the 62 number when they took over Hennepin CSAH 62.

[Bickendan]

What's with the milemarkers on US 65? They're in the low 300s, which doesn't make any sense at all, and only reach the 270-280s on the Iowa side.

Most likely changed in order to prevent internal confusion with MN 65 - the Twin Cities' MN 62 has mileposts starting in the 100s for that reason.

How would they be? The Minneapolis portion should be starting in the low 100s, from the overlap on I-35 and 35W from Albert Lea to Minneapolis.

Looks like MN 44's milemarkers start off in the 30's. Unconstructed western segment perhaps, I'm guessing from about the US 63/MN 56 junction toward Harmony perhaps?

Also, apparently US 61 is the dominant route from La Crescent through Winona, not US 14. I would have expected the low numbered route in a given tier to be the dominant route. Not an especially pressing 'concern' however.

Also, paging rawmustard, could we get the MN shield icon on this (and other Minnesota) threads please? It makes it easier to spot in the forum's list

[texaskdog]

US routes:  x1>x4

[froggie]

Most likely changed in order to prevent internal confusion with MN 65 - the Twin Cities' MN 62 has mileposts starting in the 100s for that reason.

How would they be? The Minneapolis portion should be starting in the low 100s, from the overlap on I-35 and 35W from Albert Lea to Minneapolis.

Despite the route south of Albert Lea being a US route, the route north of Minneapolis is both more important to MnDOT and is a far longer route (close to 300 miles).

Looks like MN 44's milemarkers start off in the 30's. Unconstructed western segment perhaps, I'm guessing from about the US 63/MN 56 junction toward Harmony perhaps?

MN 44 previously began at US 63 (about 2.5 miles north of the 63/56 junction), but was turned back west of Harmony in the mid-90s.  The turned back segment is now CSAH 44.

[J N Winkler]

This time I'm writing to ask if any thought has been given to a bypass of St. Cloud that would provide a stoplight-free transit of its urbanized area for traffic following the TH 23 corridor.  I had the misfortune to try to get through the town on a Friday in late August, when it was choked with weekenders (probably from the Twin Cities), and was both amazed and appalled by the number of stoplights:  I count 22 traffic signal installations along TH 23 between I-94 and TH 95 inclusive.

A casual check of Google Maps routings suggests my options for this length of TH 23 are as follows:

*  TH 23 all the way (13.5 miles)--23 minutes

*  I-94 to TH 15, TH 15 back to TH 23 (cuts out five signals, since it is mostly grade-separated and stoplight-free all the way to TH 23) (15.3 miles)--20 minutes

*  I-94 to TH 24 Clearwater-Clear Lake, back north to TH 95 via locally maintained roads (30.5 miles)--34 minutes

The last-listed route has a very steep distance penalty of 17 miles but in Friday afternoon traffic might have been faster, and would almost certainly have been less hassle.  It took considerably longer than 23 minutes to clear St. Cloud along TH 23.

Casual Googling suggests that the closest thing to a TH 23 St. Cloud bypass MnDOT has on its books is a freeway connector between I-94 and US 10, loosely following the TH 24 corridor between Clearwater and Clear Lake.  This is described as "unprogrammed" and the timeline ends in 2008.

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/d3/projects/interregionalconnection/

Bypasses along the TH 23 corridor near St. Cloud have already been built, including one at Willmar and another at Paynesville that apparently opened a few years ago after being on the drawing boards for twenty years.

[Mdcastle]

How much traffic on MN 23 is bypassing St. Cloud really?
There was an option (That St. Cloud was really pushing for that would have built the new river crossing around 33rd, but this was one of the more expensive and least effective options towards the goal of making it easier for traffic shuttling between US 10 and I-94

[J N Winkler]

St. Cloud has a population of about 70,000, so a ballpark estimate for the proportion of bypassable traffic on TH 23 (based on 1930's research that regresses bypassable traffic against city size) is 45%.  It would require an origin-destination survey (possibly one using automatic license plate recognition over a wide area) to come up with exact figures.

The cross-section width in combination with the level of summer Friday afternoon congestion on TH 23 through St. Cloud proper is consistent with an AADT in the 30,000-40,000 VPD range.  45% of 30,000 VPD is 13,500 VPD, which is enough to meet the traditional 10,000 VPD warrant for widening from two-lane to four-lane divided.  This does not take into account seasonality of traffic volume, which is likely to be stronger in Minnesota because of the cold winters.

However, it does give an indication of why the St. Cloud city planners would push for a connector in the 33rd St. S. corridor, as this allows TH 23 to be bypassed with no length disadvantage, minimum land-take in the urbanized area since the areas east of the Mississippi River are still greenfield, and with excellent access to the airport.  As a connector between I-94 and US 10 it is not particularly efficient, but the fact that MnDOT's preferred Clearwater/Clear Lake solution is better for traffic to and from the Twin Cities does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from a St. Cloud bypass for TH 23 traffic.

[froggie]

To my knowledge, there has never been consideration of a St. Cloud bypass for MN 23 traffic.  Nor is there really a need for one.  Despite what Jonathan put in his last post, the percentage of through traffic along MN 23 through St. Cloud is no higher than 25%, and most likely lower than that.

I also find the comment about "weekenders in St. Cloud" intriguing because, in my considerable experience (countless weekends passing through St. Cloud going up to my grandparent's cabin), the "weekenders" are largely along I-94 and US 10, not MN 23.  Some may have trickled over to MN 15 over the past 20 years now that it's a completed route (it wasn't when I was growing up), but few weekenders are actually stopping in St. Cloud.

Given MnDOT's limited funding, the focus in the St. Cloud area should be where the need is greatest.  And that isn't MN 23.  It's US 10 (high through traffic volumes, especially summer weekends) and MN 15 (generally higher traffic than MN 23).

The last-listed route has a very steep distance penalty of 17 miles but in Friday afternoon traffic might have been faster, and would almost certainly have been less hassle.

Not if you were headed north/east.  You'd have gotten caught in the head-up-to-the-lake rush and certainly would have had a travel time longer than the 34 minutes advertised...

However, it does give an indication of why the St. Cloud city planners would push for a connector in the 33rd St. S. corridor, as this allows TH 23 to be bypassed with no length disadvantage

This is not why they were pushing for a connector along 33rd, however.  They A) wanted another river crossing close to the city, and B) wanted a corridor that could be developed.  Nor did, as I've noted in past research, such a corridor actually connect back to MN 23 to the west...

[Mdcastle]

North Star Highways is Back
https://northstarhighways.wordpress.com

After losing the old site due to an ISP switch I've been writing for a local transportation issues blog, but after a few years some of the mods made it clear my opinions were no longer welcome there so it was time to move on. Right now the priority is copying existing content: blog posts, old web site pages, and some Flickr galleries over and travel season is about over, so don't expect much for "new" content for a while.

For those that read my articles over there, I'm not making a lot of changes when I'm copying them; just updates when appropriate, removal of links to other writer's articles, and reformatting it more like a static web page as opposed to a blog. (Even though it's a blog format because that's the easiest way to publish content on the web nowadays, and I learned wordpress writing for the other site.)

I am abandoning a few articles that are now dated, but all of the good relevant ones I'm republishing. The only ones with substantial changes are the general streetlights articles, which now that I've written several I'm reformatting them to be more logical, and the "Four-Lane Death Road" article, that I'm rewriting from scratch. My content on their site is still there. I've neither asked for it to be removed nor asked that it stay, and I don't have standing to demand either.

[J N Winkler]

To my knowledge, there has never been consideration of a St. Cloud bypass for MN 23 traffic.  Nor is there really a need for one.  Despite what Jonathan put in his last post, the percentage of through traffic along MN 23 through St. Cloud is no higher than 25%, and most likely lower than that.

How do you arrive at that estimate?

I also find the comment about "weekenders in St. Cloud" intriguing because, in my considerable experience (countless weekends passing through St. Cloud going up to my grandparent's cabin), the "weekenders" are largely along I-94 and US 10, not MN 23.  Some may have trickled over to MN 15 over the past 20 years now that it's a completed route (it wasn't when I was growing up), but few weekenders are actually stopping in St. Cloud.

I don't actually think St. Cloud is the destination of this weekender traffic.  Instead, I suspect a large share of the traffic on TH 23 (larger than on other weekday afternoons in August, and larger than on Friday afternoons in the cold months of the year) is transiting St. Cloud from northeast to southwest, or vice versa.  I-94 and US 10 would definitely carry larger volumes of weekender traffic because they are direct connections to the Twin Cities, but I-94 at least is a full freeway and has much greater capacity.  The Twin Cities are by far the largest population center in Minnesota, so it would not surprise me if traffic originating there but on tangential itineraries were supplying much of the volume on TH 23.

Given MnDOT's limited funding, the focus in the St. Cloud area should be where the need is greatest.  And that isn't MN 23.  It's US 10 (high through traffic volumes, especially summer weekends) and MN 15 (generally higher traffic than MN 23).

I am not familiar with conditions on US 10 in the St. Cloud area, but TH 15 at least appears to have comprehensive grade separation with no stoplights from I-94 north to the intersection with TH 23 where the two routes begin their dogleg overlap.  I can envisage bottlenecking at that first stoplight at TH 23, but I would have expected TH 15 as a whole to operate at a higher LOS.

However, it does give an indication of why the St. Cloud city planners would push for a connector in the 33rd St. S. corridor, as this allows TH 23 to be bypassed with no length disadvantage

This is not why they were pushing for a connector along 33rd, however.  They A) wanted another river crossing close to the city, and B) wanted a corridor that could be developed.  Nor did, as I've noted in past research, such a corridor actually connect back to MN 23 to the west...

I take the point regarding the planners' intent.  Development roads are properly the business of a local agency, not the state DOT.  If the concept had instead been for a TH 23 bypass to handle through traffic, the connection on the east side would be entirely on undeveloped greenfield land and so would be fairly simple to build (absent complications such as floodplain or wetlands).

I find it rather interesting that Willmar and Paynesville both have TH 23 bypasses while St. Cloud does not.  They are much smaller than St. Cloud, which translates into shorter lengths of new construction required, better availability of feasible corridors, and higher percentages of bypassable traffic, but also lesser benefit to through traffic in terms of time savings.  In both cases the bypasses are of high specification, consisting of divided highways with grade-separated interchanges at major intersections (Willmar's is full freeway but does include a US 71 overlap).

[froggie]

How do you arrive at that estimate?

A combination of ongoing analysis of traffic volumes in the region and my own anecdotal experience in the area.

Instead, I suspect a large share of the traffic on TH 23 (larger than on other weekday afternoons in August, and larger than on Friday afternoons in the cold months of the year) is transiting St. Cloud from northeast to southwest, or vice versa.

Not as much as you were thinking before, hence the comment I made upthread.

[J N Winkler]

I did some digging and found this study that focuses on TH 23 improvements between I-94 and TH 15/CSAH 75:

http://www.stcloudapo.org/uploads/1/2/8/7/12874227/th_23_and_csah_75_corridor_study.pdf

It confirms pretty much what I observed--traffic conditions are bad and set to get worse.  But probably the key parts are what it does not say.  The only build options it mentions keep traffic signals on TH 23 where they are now (the most ambitious call for them to be retained as part of a "throughpass" with beefed-up access control, backage development, and RIRO conversions).  None of the projections take account of any intent to build a TH 23 bypass.  The scoping (only a little of the way into the St. Cloud built-up area, covering about one-quarter of the stoplights required for a complete transit) is in itself indicative.

A TH 23 corridor study was apparently done in 1997, but I have not been able to find it online as a PDF.  This would be useful as a hard check on the estimates of through traffic volume quoted so far in this thread, and might give an indication as to whether the study authors believed St. Cloud would have to be bypassed at some point in the future.  The Paynesville Bypass EIS is online (as a Google Book) but doesn't seem to have origin-destination information for St. Cloud at the other end of Stearns County.  For Paynesville it does report an O/D study (carried out in 2001) and there is a large difference in bypassable traffic percentage between weekdays and summer weekends--generally in the 40%-60% range for typical commute times but climbing to 70%-90% on the weekends.  A similar (though somewhat smaller gap) may be present for St. Cloud.

[lakewobegon]

After lurking for 2 years, this topic brought me out of the shadows.
I've been living in St. Cloud for the past 27 years. Not only does TH 23 have loads of lights. They are also badly synchronized. In addition, the two intersections of TH 15 with TH 23 (and CR 75) are rated among the worst 10 intersections in MN as of 2013. That's because there is so much turning left traffic in all directions that the two lights each only allow 1 direction of travel at a time. https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2013/11/minnesota-s-10-most-dangerous-intersections-and-why-they-are-so-perilous
Also, all main roads on the west side of the Mississippi River converge at these intersections.

For north-south bypasses. The TH 15 bypass is not a great solution, since it has 8 traffic signals between I-94 and US 10. And, US 10 is bogged down by two signals in St. Cloud. On Friday afternoons and Sunday afternoons, the back-ups approaching these lights are huge (last 2-3 cycles).

The TH 24 corridor doesn't work as a bypass since it is a primary transfer route of I-94 traffic to Hwy. 10.

Bob Weisman