It’s the worst roadway in Twin Cities. And it’s at MSP Airport.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport gets high ratings — it’s the best mega-sized one in North America, according to J.D. Power’s 2024 ranking. And it’s about to get even bigger. MSP recently announced an expansion of Terminal 1’s Concourse G, with more retail and art exhibits. A nice place for lingering and perusing and snacking, if you’re not dashing to your next flight.

Among the amenities is a bright, spacious atrium. “A new sensory space will provide a calm area that reduces the stress and sensory overload that sometimes accompanies travel, ensuring a more positive experience for those who need it,” says the Metropolitan Airports Commission on its site.

Well, it’s calming everywhere in the airport, once you’re past security and if you have enough time. The open areas and atriums are nice, and MSP is one of those airports that reward long walks. Exploring unfamiliar concourses to check out the artistic bathrooms is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when you are there.

But it’s a different story outside, down in the hellish depths of the pickup area on Terminal 1’s baggage-claim level. That’s not a calm area. It does not reduce stress or sensory overload. And it does not provide a more positive experience. Even the name, Glumack Drive, sounds like a mucky morass.

There’s no other roadway in the Twin Cities that gives you the mood of New York City’s Manhattan at 5 p.m. Let us count the ways that make it the worst possible situation:

1. The signs say “No Parking.” Yet, people are parked. Obviously, you have to stop so people can toss their bags in the trunk and have a seat. You cannot park and leave the car — unless you are helping someone with their bag, which is technically parking, but they’re not going to ding you for that. There are official people in reflective vests making sure you do not park, but that does not stop the drivers.

2. Everyone is simultaneously attempting to get to the curb and pull away from the curb, but since large arrangements of matter cannot occupy the same space, there’s gridlock. When the second lane away from the curb is clotted, the third starts to seize up.

3. When you enter the pickup area, there are two lanes, depending on which set of doors the person to be picked up has chosen. You don’t always know which lane to choose. Maybe you didn’t know that you had to choose. This is necessary and efficient, but it causes a brain freeze for some.

4. The temperament of the airport personnel patrolling the area can affect the general mood. It is not a fun job and they have to be stern and could resort to brusque gestures. You can be doing everything right and yet be made to feel as if you’re doing something wrong.

5. Everyone is a distracted driver, because everyone is looking for someone standing on the sidewalk, while trying not to hit the car in front of them.

Of course, all of this can be entirely avoided: Pick up the person on the upper level. This is so obvious, you wonder why everyone doesn’t do this. It might be some psychological factor, as if it violates some cosmic law to pick up people in the departure area.

But is there any hope to get rid of the lower Glumack gridlock?

Jeff Lea, manager of strategic communications at MSP, gives some insights.

“I think it’s the inherent nature of the activity that has to take place,” he said. “The Metropolitan Airport Commission intends to improve the curbside experience, but that’s looking out a ways.”

Nothing can be done tomorrow, in other words. “You have a hard parking ramp on one side, and the terminal on the other and the roadway in between,” Lea said.

It’s not as if MSP wants a visitor’s last impression to be a bad one. It’s not as if it wants locals to wince at the thought of braving the Glumack underworld, either. Here’s a hint: Try waiting until the last moment at the cellphone lots on Post Road, betwixt Terminals 1 and 2. There’s no art or food. But there’s no sensory overload or stress, either.

One might even call the place ... calming.