MnDOT: Scrap parkway plan, keep I-94 a freeway between St. Paul and Minneapolis

The Minnesota Department of Transportation is recommending that Interstate 94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul remain a freeway, ruling out an ambitious proposal to fill in the trench and replace it with a parkway or boulevard with at-grade crossings.

MnDOT reached that conclusion after more than a year spent evaluating 10 options for the roadway, and taking input from the public and interested groups as it studies remaking one of the metro area’s busiest corridors.

“We are confident in our analysis,” said Melissa Barnes, director of the high-profile project dubbed Rethinking I-94. “This is a busy area. We have a lot to balance.”

An internal agency document obtained this week by the Minnesota Star Tribune spells out how MnDOT arrived at its decision. An agency spokesman verified the document’s authenticity.

Our Streets, a transportation advocacy organization, responded by accusing MnDOT of quietly eliminating alternatives that would reconnect Black neighborhoods like St. Paul’s Rondo that were split apart when the freeway was built 60 years ago.

A boulevard with at-grade crossings would create cleaner air, bring economic opportunities and provide easily accessible, affordable and sustainable transportation, the group said.

“This move, rushed before the holidays, effectively denies the public a chance to explore a transformative alternative that reconnects neighborhoods and addresses decades of harm,“ Our Streets said in a statement. “While this is a setback, we join thousands of Minneapolis and St. Paul residents in calling on MnDOT to restore the boulevard options.”

Rethinking I-94 has been on the drawing board for nearly a decade and marks the first comprehensive review of the freeway built in the 1960s. In 2016, then-Transportation Commissioner Charlie Zelle issued an apology for the harm the freeway has done.

That rings hollow, Our Streets said.

“MnDOT’s Rethinking I-94 team should be embarrassed to repeat a harmful history by removing these options without consent from those most impacted,” the Our Streets statement said. “MnDOT continues advancing plans to rebuild this emblem of white supremacy against the will of affected communities.”

In September, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting Our Street’s push for a road with fewer lanes and the opportunity to repurpose highway land for public housing, affordable commercial space, parks, community gardens or uses determined by surrounding communities.

The resolution asks MnDOT to “improve the Rethinking I-94 project’s evaluation criteria to more accurately measure and prioritize the impacts on adjacent neighborhoods.”

Any redo of I-94 needs to improve the ability to move goods and people through the corridor, fix aging infrastructure, address safety issues and congestion, promote better health and enhance community and connectivity, MnDOT said.

MnDOT’s analysis recommends the dismissal of two designs that would replace several overpasses and interchanges with at-grade crossings and signal lights and include a dedicated transit lane.

Another option that would shrink I-94 to two lanes with a dedicated bus in each direction and feature separate lanes for local traffic to get on and off intersecting streets should also be eliminated, the agency recommended. Essentially that would result in three sets of roads, according to the plans.

Another option not seen as worthy was adding an additional travel lane in each direction with bus lanes on the shoulder.

The at-grade options create additional safety hazards for pedestrians and bicyclists. The option also would “negatively impact mobility,” the document states.

In 2023, traffic consultant Jaimie Sloboden found that more than 50 million motorists used I-94 between the downtowns. If the freeway were to be reconfigured with at-grade crossings, the road could handle only about 12.8 million motorists, as roads with traffic signals have a much reduced capacity compared to a freeway.

That means 37 million trips would be displaced, and traffic “would have to go somewhere,” meaning moving to other local streets or shifting to transit, Sloboden said in a presentation to MnDOT.

Options with at-grade crossings “will have major impacts to the local system and regionally,” Barnes said. Filling in the trench with dirt and compacting it would carry a monumental cost and “take many construction seasons,” she said.

At the same time, expanding the freeway with more travel lanes could bring an additional 20 million trips a day, meaning more congestion, noise and air pollution, Barnes said.

For those reasons, MnDOT is recommending those options be nixed, she said.

Options that should move forward include those that would add a transit lane west of Hwy. 280 and rebuild bridges between Hwy. 55 and Marion Street to make better and safer crossings for pedestrians and bicyclists. Another option to configure I-94 with three travel lanes in each direction with a dedicated E-ZPass and bus rapid transit lane should also move forward. Leaving the freeway as it is also an option.

MnDOT has conducted surveys and held community meetings and spoke with “thousands and tens of thousands of people” in recent years, Barnes said, and will continue to do so. Another round of engagement will kick off Jan. 17.

Barnes stressed that nothing is final, and won’t be until spring 2026 at the earliest. And for now, eliminating concepts featuring at-grade crossings are only recommendations. MnDOT won’t be alone in coming up with a final plan, she added.

“A lot of federal agencies will review the plans as well,” she said. “We do our best to communicate and show trade-offs [with each plan] to the public.”