Viewers share their driving frustrations: CLICK HERE
There's not much to it, really.
It's a tiny section of road, only one thousand feet long.
It connects three lanes of eastbound Interstate 394 with three lanes of eastbound Interstate 94.
The problem is, the connector itself is a one-lane road.
In preparing this story, KARE 11 reporter and anchor Rick Kupchella was talking about this road, when someone said to him, "To be fair, you should realize that ramps connecting one highway to another are often only one lane."
Which is true if a driver is going from east to south, or north to west.
This is much less the case, however, when the traffic is headed in one continuous direction.
This section of road, just west of downtown near the Basilica, is the epitomy of the word, "bottleneck."
From the air, it's something to behold. You can see the traffic stretch-on for miles.
But living it down on the ground is not so impressive.
Morning to night, the one-lane I-394 bridge is fully-loaded.
You couldn't put more cars on this road if you tried.
A single lane is considered "full-capacity" at 1800 vehicles an hour.
But the average on this section of road is 2,000 vehicles all day.
At peak, we push 2200 vehicles through here in an hour.
We wanted to understand the impact on the people who drive it every day.
How much time is lost here? How much life - gone?
So we sent photographer Craig Norkus out over a couple days to clock the drive.
We know without the traffic jam we could get from Louisiana to "I-94" in about four-and-half minutes.
But that one-lane bridge is a major hurdle in heavy traffic.
On the days we clocked it, congestion was so bad, the four-and-a-half minute drive took about 18-minutes.
That means about 13 minutes of Craig's life here was lost just waiting.
There were 2,000 cars through here at the same time.
So, collectively drivers here lost 27 days worth of time in this one afternoon rush.
Extrapolate the math over the course of a year and you see how drivers lose 19 years worth of time here every year.
So how did we get here?
Why would anyone use a one lane bridge to connect all this traffic headed in one direction?
For answers we turned to the folks at the Traffic Observatory at the University of Minnesota.
They've been looking at this section of road for years.
The first thing they want you to know the bridge is not the problem.
The problem, they say, is the Lowry tunnel just east of the bridge on I-94.
John Hourdos, who manages the lab here, says, "reconstructing the tunnel will be a very major undertaking."
As it is the tunnel has three lanes for eastbound traffic.
Two of those lanes must be dedicated to I-94 to qualify it as an 'interstate'.
That leaves just one more lane for cars coming from I-394.
This is how we came to be 'stuck' with the one lane bridge.
Geometrically, Hourdos says, it's quite possible to expand the bridge to two lanes but, "What are you going to do with the tunnel?"
Born and raised in Greece, Hourdos may know more about this section of Minneapolis highway than anyone else on the planet.
He sees the ramp here as the "safety valve" for the tunnel.
"If you don't have that safety valve, the actual bottleneck constriction will be in the tunnel - and that's a dangerous place to have crashes," Hourdos said.
The Lowry tunnel was built in the 1960s. I-394 didn't come along until 20 years later.
Jerome Adams, a senior engineer with MNDOT, acknowledged that the organization clearly understands there's an "un-met demand" for at least two lanes being served from 394 to 94 eastbound.
But, he says, "There was no way to get around that 3-lane tunnel."
It turns out MNDOT has been spending a great deal of time on this issue.
In fact, they were involved in a major study of this area that wrapped up just a week before the I-35W bridge collapse.
Their report has been sitting quietly on a shelf ever since.
They've been hyper-focused on I-94, running from I-394, through the tunnel and all the way through the I-35W Commons.
The whole thing is in dramatic need of "fixing."
Ironically, the problems have eased up a bit since the collapse of the I-35W bridge. There's less demand from the north to this section of highway.
But when the new bridge is up and carrying traffic again in another year, it's expected to bring even more traffic than it did before.
Experts also predict more traffic to enter this section of I-94 from the south, with expansion plans already in the works on I-35W, south of I-94.
This section of I-94 already ranks as the most accident-prone sight in the state - eight times greater than the metro average.
Highway workers have tried to reduce the crash rate here by painting in double white lines which you're not supposed to cross.
When we watched it over a few days this fall it was clear that is not working.
Hourdos says, "Nobody gives a damn."
Looking at the total work to be done here it's daunting.
As Hourdos sees it, "There is not enough money in two states to fix all of it."
In a twisted sort of way the massive congestion to the east and west of the tunnel has helped the tunnel live as long as it has.
There are so many problems getting to the tunnel that the six lanes within it appear to work just fine.
Adams, with MNDOT says, "I think you'll recognize that right now, once you get past the congestion, once you're actually in the tunnel, you can actually step on the gas pedal."
That's true.
But MNDOT says if they fixed the congestion areas going into the tunnel from I-35W and from I-394, the tunnel itself would become a major problem.
They won't be worried about it any time soon.
The process involved in planning it which has yet to begin, would normally take at least a generation.
Adams, with the department for several years, is now only 35-years-old. He says significant improvements are so far off, he expects it sometime after his own retirement.
While MNDOT is not recommending any particular action on the tunnel, they are calling for a detailed study of the issue, to determine how far it could be expanded - if and when - they ever begin to move in that direction.
(Copyright 2007 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
