Congestion relief finally coming for drivers on Hwy. 10 in northwest metro as major project kicks off

On many weekdays, the morning rush hour on eastbound Hwy. 10 in Coon Rapids feels more like the crawl hour.

Afternoons are no joy for westbound drivers creeping along as traffic often jams up for miles.

Finally, relief is on the way.

Starting Monday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation will get to work on eliminating one of the metro area’s most notorious choke points by adding a third lane from near Hanson Boulevard to Round Lake Boulevard.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” said Joe MacPherson, a traffic engineer with Anoka County, which conducted a feasibility study and did preliminary engineering work before turning the $40 million project over to MnDOT.

Construction-weary drivers may not appreciate yet another summer of road work along the heavily traveled corridor. For the past two years, motorists encountered delays and lane closures as MnDOT rebuilt the highway through Anoka.

But by the end of the summer, the goal is to have free-flowing traffic on Hwy. 10 all the way from Hwy. 610 in Brooklyn Park out to Elk River.

Here is how it will all go down:

Motorists should not feel a huge pinch right away. From Monday through April 6, ramps from northbound Round Lake Boulevard to eastbound Hwy. 10 and from Main Street to westbound Hwy. 10 will be closed during overnight hours and reopened during the day. Closures will begin about 7 nightly, said MnDOT spokesman Kent Barnard.

Crews will be widening ramps. Drivers could encounter lane closures in the vicinity of both ramps.

The cone zone will take shape starting April 7 as crews begin yanking out the center cable median barriers. MnDOT will keep two travel lanes open on Hwy. 10, but motorists will be shifted onto shoulders at times as they pass through the area. That Monday also is when the loop ramp from southbound Round Lake Boulevard to eastbound Hwy. 10 closes until the project is complete in October.

In June, all four ramps at Hanson Boulevard and three additional ramps at Round Lake Boulevard will shut down and drivers will be detoured to Main Street to access Hwy. 10.

On the mainline, MnDOT will shift some eastbound traffic onto the westbound lanes. Concrete barriers will separate oncoming traffic. Both directions will have “chutes” with one lane dedicated for through traffic and a second reserved for drivers needing to access local roads.

It is a similar setup MnDOT used when it reconstructed Interstate 94 through Maple Grove a few years ago.

“This will be challenging,” Barnard said.

The 3-mile segment between Hanson and Round Lake boulevards carries about 69,000 vehicles daily and is prone to congestion. A 2019 study by Anoka County found traffic jams up two to four hours a day with backups stretching 1 to 3 miles through Coon Rapids.

Bottlenecks on the westbound lanes develop because the highway drops from three lanes to two at Hanson Boulevard.

Resulting congestion has put a strain on nearby city and county roads as drivers use them to avoid sitting in congestion, MacPherson said. With an additional lane on Hwy. 10, as many as 2,000 vehicles could potentially shift off Hanson Boulevard and back onto Hwy. 10, and volumes on Coon Rapids Boulevard could drop by 1,400 vehicles a day, he said.

Yes, said Coon Rapids City Engineer Mark Hansen.

“A lot of traffic gets off Hwy. 10 at Round Lake Boulevard to go north to Andover,” Hansen said. “This will really help. This project will benefit not just Coon Rapids but the region.”

Barnard also said the project is meant to improve safety. Since 2014, MnDOT data shows there have been 140 crashes resulting in damage to property in the 3-mile segment, 19 that included an injury and 30 more that may have left somebody hurt. There have been no fatal wrecks in the past 10 years.

“When we increase capacity, people are not as impatient or make unsafe movements,” Barnard said. “They won’t get as frustrated sitting in traffic.”

Construction zones can bring out bad driver behavior, as witnessed in 2023 when a pickup truck driver appeared to have caused a crash by purposely veering into the path of another driver using an open lane to reach a merge point on Hwy. 10 in Coon Rapids.

Nichole Morris, director of the University of Minnesota’s HumanFirst Laboratory, saw the crash video and called it “traffic violence.”

Hansen, the Coon Rapids city engineer, hopes cooler heads prevail while work is carried out over the next six months.

“Stay patient, it’s worth it in the long run,” he said. “It’s a challenge to get through it, but the payoff is increased safety and reduced congestion, something we all want.”

Barnard said the new lanes should be traffic-ready by mid- to late October if all goes well. MnDOT will be out next spring to add a thin layer of asphalt and new lane markings, officially bringing the project to a close.

Hwy. 10 “will be the crown jewel of the northwest metro,” Barnard said.