Time-constrained tour of Hiawatha LRT, I-35W bridge

[J N Winkler]

I am making an air journey next Wednesday which requires me to connect through Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.  I have a long layover (5.15 PM to 9.55 PM).  Is it feasible for me to take the Hiawatha LRT downtown and walk around to see the new I-35W bridge on foot?

I am having a hard time figuring this out since I can't get schedules for line 55 (Hiawatha LRT) from the Metro Transit website at the moment.  My tentative calculation is 50 minutes to go and 50 minutes to return (12.3-mile length of line divided by 18 MPH average speed Wikipedia quotes, or 40 minutes travelling time, plus 10 minute headway between successive trains), plus 10 minutes to buy the ticket depending on how difficult it is to interact with the fare machine.  I'm not sure how reasonable this is, however, or how long it would take to walk to a good vantage point for the 35W bridge from the nearest LRT stop.

I'm grateful for any advice.  The backup plan is to try to visit Mall of America, which is closer, but frankly I don't think it is very wise with Christmas so close.

[froggie]

Plan on about an 8-10 minute walk to get to the LRT from your gate.  Service is every 10 minutes during the evening rush, and it only takes about 20 minutes or so to get from the airport to the edge of downtown.  Fare machines are not that hard.  Would suggest getting off at Cedar-Riverside...from there it's a 1 mile (so ~20min depending on your walking speed) to the 10th Ave Bridge, from which you can get a direct view at the adjacent I-35W bridge.

In the evenings, service is every 15 minutes.  Security in my experience usually isn't too bad at MSP, but I'd still plan on 15-20 minutes to get through security.

So for a 15min visit at the bridge, I'd count on about 2hr40min total.  As long as you land at/before 6pm, I think it's doable.

Hope that helps.

[J N Winkler]

Thanks--it does help.

I have checked and weather is supposed to be reasonably good on Wednesday.  It looks like the main constraint, in addition to arrival time, will be the time it takes me to clear passport control and Customs (I'm coming from London).