MnDOT, safety task force don’t see eye to eye on plans to upgrade Hwy. 252

No one seems to disagree that Hwy. 252 running through Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center is a dangerous road, rife with crashes and plagued with congestion.

There is little agreement on what the Minnesota Department of Transportation should do about it, if anything.

Last week, members of a safety task force gave their opinions at a presentation to the Brooklyn Center City Council. One member called MnDOT’s plan to convert the four-lane highway into a freeway with underpasses or overpasses at key intersections flawed and urged council members to withhold municipal consent.

“We need a thoughtfully designed Hwy. 252 to benefit our citizens and citizens who are traveling along 252,” said Lisa McNaughton, a Brooklyn Center resident and member of the task force commissioned by the city. “We must protect our community.”

MnDOT has looked at several layouts for Hwy. 252 in the past decade, and a few years ago tossed out results of previous studies and started over. A new study has produced options that include transforming the highway into a freeway with four or six lanes (two or three in each direction) and possibly incorporating an EZ Pass lane and using shoulders for transit buses.

Those options would bring “a cavalcade of harms” to Brooklyn Center, said task force member Stephen Cooper. The plan, he said, would increase traffic, noise and pollution. It also would remove homes and businesses and reduce the tax base for one of the most economically challenged cities in the metro without addressing the biggest concern of safety.

Cooper worries a freeway would not slow traffic on a thoroughfare that already is serving 50,000 to 60,000 motorists a day. Nor would a freeway eliminate crashes or solve safety issues, particularly at 66th Avenue where any interchange would be fewer than 1,000 feet from the already busy interchange at Interstate 694 and traffic is weaving across lanes.

“We can’t risk locking in a dangerous design for generations to come,” said task force member Bill Newman.

MnDOT project manager Amber Blanchard said goals for redoing Hwy. 252 are to improve vehicle safety, create more reliable travel times and make the road better for those who walk, bike, roll and use transit.

Between 2016 and 2019, MnDOT data showed 654 crashes at intersections and 790 more crashes at other points along the corridor. Nearly two-thirds of crashes were rear-end collisions. Three of the crashes were fatal. Just weeks ago, a pedestrian was hit at Brookdale Drive and hospitalized with serious injuries.

“That is unacceptable to us,” Blanchard said. “There are a lot of fatal and injury crashes and we need to find a good solution. What we have now does not work.”

MnDOT has not made any decisions on which intersections will get overpasses or underpasses, but an expressway with at-grade intersections and traffic lights is off the table.

“What we are looking at will be safer than what is existing today,” Blanchard said. An expressway “does not improve on crashes as much as a freeway or grade-separated interchanges.”

In the coming weeks, Blanchard said she hopes MnDOT can go before the Brooklyn Center City Council to share its plans, and reiterate the agency is still conducting an environmental impact study.

“We are looking at tradeoffs and what can be the best improvements for crash safety and mobility, and reduce impacts as much as we can. We appreciate the passion and due diligence they are giving this. It is hard to counter when we have not designed anything yet.”

MnDOT cannot ask Brooklyn Center for consent until the study is complete in 2027.