#Mndot road closures and detours drivers#

When that work begins, east and westbound traffic will use John Street instead of Wollan Street as part of the detour route.Ī truck detour remains in place until the completion of the project in October, as the local roads cannot safely accommodate the larger truck traffic. Stage two also includes work on Highway 28, including three blocks west and half a block east. East and westbound traffic on Highway 28 will be rerouted to Wollan Street, Sixth Street and Abercrombie Street. North and southbound traffic on Highway 114 and Highway 29 will be detoured to Sixth Street, Abercrombie Street and East Eighth Street. For the second stage, the main intersection of Highway 28, 29 and 114 will close, up to Eighth Street on Highway 114. Highway 29 south from First Street to Sixth Street will open to traffic, and traffic will be detoured to Wollan Street and Sixth Street.Ĭrews will return on Monday, July 6 to begin stage two of construction. “We need people to follow law.Starting Thursday, motorists will encounter new road closures and detours in the City of Starbuck, as crews finish up the first stage of construction for the 2020 resurfacing and reconstruction project on Highways 28, 29 and 114. tonight, southbound 1-494 between I-694/94 in Maple Grove will close.

Miscreant motorists who get caught face a $145 fine, which would rise to $300 if the trooper marks on the citation that the violation was in a construction zone. Another major closure this weekend involves the busy intersections of interstates 694, 94 and 394 in the west metro.

#Mndot road closures and detours drivers#

The State Patrol has issued tickets to drivers illegally using the 31st Street ramps, but it was not immediately clear how many, said Lt. It’s like that now: The 35W ramps are open, but they are not open, he said. Several did not heed the plea and damaged lights inside the tunnel when the “road was open, but it was not open,” Aeikens said. MnDOT made a similar plea last summer when it shifted traffic to one side of the Lowry Hill Tunnel and banned trucks and oversized vehicles from passing through. We’d appreciate if people would use the detours.” “We realize having to go to another exit adds extra time. “They should not have to be there they have better things to do,” Aeikens said. Northbound drivers can get off at 46th Street or at 3rd Street in downtown Minneapolis.Īt the outset, MnDOT was paying the State Patrol $100 an hour to guard the ramps, but it’s not an option to have them there 24 hours a day, Aeikens said. The current configuration directs southbound drivers to Nicollet Avenue and down to 46th Street where they can access the freeway. The passage is too narrow to allow drivers to safely merge into traffic, Aeikens said. “This is a flagrant disregard for traffic control devices.”īesides being against the law, motorists using the ramp to southbound I-35W are putting themselves in harm’s way, Aeikens said.

“It does impede our service,” said David Hanson, Metro Transit’s assistant director of field operations. “We can move more people on a bus,” Aeikens said.īut with so many drivers using the exit and entrance ramps, some buses have had to wait to get on them, negating the transit advantage they are supposed to have. The goal was to get more people to take transit and reduce the number of vehicles moving through the area where the freeway has been squeezed to two or three lanes instead of the normal five in each direction. The agency left them open for buses to provide a way around congestion and a quicker route to downtown Minneapolis via Park and Portland avenues. MnDOT closed the ramps to general traffic in June as part of the massive $239 million downtown-to-Crosstown reconstruction project.

We are hoping people will do the right thing and not drive illegally on the ramps.” “We realize it is inconvenient,” said MnDOT spokesman David Aeikens. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is asking motorists to knock it off. The same thing is happening on the ramp from northbound I-35W to 31st and Lake Streets, even though the exit is marked with signs and the words “Buses Only” are painted on the pavement. Signs on both sides of the entrance ramp leading from 31st Street and Stevens Avenue to southbound I-35W tell motorists, “Do Not Enter.” Yet dozens of vehicles an hour are blowing right by them to use the ramp reserved exclusively for buses and emergency vehicles.