Brehm: Does construction season in Minnesota really have to be this miserable?

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of material from 11 contributing columnists, along with other commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

In a column last month, I urged that state workers be called back into the office to bring a boost of vibrancy to desolate downtown St. Paul. And Gov. Tim Walz did that the very day after my article was printed. While I’d like to credit the positive move to my writing, these days my gubernatorial influence is likely at a nadir, and I suspect that Walz had been preparing the move for months. A good decision is a good decision, and he deserves credit for it.

But “what thou giveth thou taketh away,” and just a few weeks later the Capital City suffered another setback in its hopes for a renaissance. The Minnesota Department of Transportation reduced Interstate 94 to two lanes in both directions between 11th Avenue South and Franklin Avenue Southeast in Minneapolis, cutting one of the Twin Cities’ busiest arteries (which accommodates about 167,000 vehicles per day) in half.

The resulting congestion has been horrific. During rush hour, it can now take commuters up to an hour just to get to Minneapolis or St. Paul from the other. And at all times, even on weekends, traffic is at a standstill in the construction zone, with unpredictable driving delays. There is no alternative route, other than city streets, which MnDOT has urged drivers not to use and presents dangers to both drivers and residents.

The shutdown has essentially made St. Paul a no-go zone for anyone west of the Mississippi River. It’s just not worth so much extra driving time for most people to visit us over here. That’s not good news for a downtown area and local businesses that desperately need to attract visitors from its sister city and her suburbs. A midweek Saints game for a Minneapolitan? Fuhgeddaboudit. Weekday anniversary dinner at Meritage for a 952-area code couple? Unlikely.

While the I-94 closure is technically temporary, it won’t exactly be short-lived either. The lanes will not fully reopen until November.

Listen, I get it. Minnesota’s wintry climate means that the window to do work on our roads is a narrow one. And having above-average infrastructure, which Minnesota does, means our bridges and highways must get closed from time to time for maintenance. And some inconvenience and traffic just come with living in a big city.

But the misery MnDOT has wrought upon Twin Cities commuters with its prolonged I-94 project is more than just a hassle. It’s many additional hours per week for workers with inflexible standard shifts who must travel by car to their employment during rush hour. That’s time that could be spent with family or friends instead of getting exhausted — literally — in a car.

In its reporting on the project, this newspaper celebrated some commuters opting to bike to work because of the snarls now on I-94. But that’s an option not everyone’s logistics allow for. What about Metro Transit? Their buses are stuck in the I-94 traffic along with everyone else. The Green Line? It’s a crime-infested nonstarter.

Given the tremendous tax of time MnDOT has imposed on so many Twin Cities commuters, I think it’s fair to ask: Does it have to be this way? And I did.

“MnDOT understands how challenging travel has been for motorists using this 2½-mile section of I-94 in Minneapolis,” department spokesman Ryan Wilson wrote to me in an email. “Due to the nature of this work, we needed to shift traffic off all bridges being worked on to get longer lasting and higher quality bridge repairs. Improving multiple bridges in the same project leads to more efficient work consolidated in one year instead of spreading over several construction seasons. MnDOT decided on a staging plan that allows motorists to still drive in both directions throughout the project.”

I appreciated the response, and don’t doubt, as Wilson expressed to me, that MnDOT does “take the traveling public and businesses into account when determining how to stage construction.” But I remain skeptical that the disruption here couldn’t have been lessened.

MnDOT says this project to smooth roads and repair bridges on I-94 will cost around $16 million. Yet it will take 30 weeks to finish. Hmm. At my math, that’s just $533,333 of work being done per week, which isn’t a lot of money when it comes to interstate construction. Hard to believe that MnDOT’s multi-month timeframe could not have been condensed. I could see grinning and bearing this for a calendar month or even two. But seven is too tall an order.

On a purely anecdotal level, the impression that this project is in no hurry is reinforced every evening when I cross over the Dartmouth Bridge and pass by idle equipment and abandoned workstations on the opposite side of the bumper-to-bumper traffic I sit in. I get that same all-too-calm view on weekends too. Wilson told me that crews “are working 6 days a week for 10-12 hours a day on this project.” I’ll take him at his word, but things have looked mighty quiet to me at twilight. And when I drove home from Minneapolis to St. Paul on I-94 last Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t see a soul on the construction site.

Here’s another one for the MnDOT suggestion box: It would be wise to have round-the-clock, multi-shift construction crews assigned to the I-94 project to get it done more quickly. Wilson told me that MnDOT doesn’t do that, as “efficiency drops off dramatically.” But states such as California and Illinois, no paragons of efficiency, regularly conduct highway repair work overnight. We should too. Minnesota pays some of the highest taxes in the nation, and there’s no reason our roads shouldn’t be fixed as fast as any other state does.

While I am no highway engineer, the sheer number of freeway construction projects across the metro this summer seems staggering. Large portions of I-494 and I-35W will be closed, which seems now to be an atrocious annual summertime tradition here. A good stretch of I-394 will be blocked off as well. Traffic is going to be nightmarish. Why not devote more of MnDOT’s resources to fewer projects at a time to finish them more quickly before moving onto other ones, that way keeping severe congestion isolated and brief? There just has to be a better way to do this than shutting down every thoroughfare in the Twin Cities from Easter until the snow falls. Every. Single. Year.

A mentor once told me that the worst response to give when asked why a process is followed is to say: “We’ve just always done it this way.” To revitalize downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul, encourage in-person work and make our communities more livable and accessible, we need to do better than the perpetual summer gridlock Minnesotans are told just to tolerate. MnDOT needs to get creative and find ways to make their projects move faster. Summer is Minnesota’s shortest and sweetest season. We don’t endure our long and cold winters just to spend it in traffic.